Millions of folks around the globe are working from home during the COVID-19 lock down. And many of them say, in recent polls, that they like it better than going in to a conventional office every day. But there are some dangerous dietary traps work-from-homers can easily fall into…
Folks who work from home can easily fall into dietary traps
that effect their overall health and mental abilities.
A number of big corporations say they’re watching the work-from-home experiences of their employees with an eye to making permanent changes to their office models. Specifically, they’re thinking they can shut down much of their expensive conventional office space and have employees work from home permanently.
May not be all that good for workers
However, there are definite drawbacks to that idea. First, behavioural and medical experts say permanent isolation of employees from co-workers will have serious negative effects on those involved, regardless of the benefits to employers and workers say they see in working from home. Among those, the experts warn that corporate esprit de corps will plummet if workers don’t mingle with their fellows regularly.
But a more troubling trend the medicos are predicting focuses on employees’ eating habits when working from home.
Health traps abound
I can see a number of potential health traps the work from homers could easily fall into. For one, I can see them snacking to excess (continually) rather than sticking to their usual coffee break and lunch routines. I also foresee an explosion of overweight and obesity among home workers when the only exercise they get through the day is to go to the kitchen to grab something to eat. And those who used to walk to work won’t be doing that; they’ll have to make an effort to replace that lost exercise with planned routines which will be easy to skip (cheat on), especially on rainy days.
But it’s the more subtle dietary traps that some researchers are warning of.
Fatty foods convenient, comforting
“Fatty food may feel like a friend during these troubled times, but new research suggests that eating just one meal high in Saturated Fat can hinder our ability to concentrate,” warns the abstract of a recent study by a team at Ohio State University.
They compared the performance of subjects on a test of their ability to concentrate after a meal high in Saturated Fat and again after a low-Saturated Fat meal, and found that the high-Saturated Fat meal caused study participants to score markedly lower on the tests.
It could be that fatty acids are interacting with the brain directly” study report Lead Author Annelise Madison remarked. “What it does show is the power of gut-related dysregulation.”
The takeaway
“Most prior work looking at the causative effect of the diet has looked over a period of time. And this was just one meal – it’s pretty remarkable that we saw a difference,” Madison said. “Because both meals were high-fat and potentially problematic, the high-saturated-fat meal’s cognitive effect could be even greater if it were compared to a lower-fat meal.”
My take
I think anybody, left to their own predispositions and with no countervailing pressures from their environment or other people around them, would tend to gravitate toward unhealthier eating habits, especially over time – i.e., if the work from home situation was permanent.
We all know that eating too much Fatty food, especially in the absence of adequate exercise, can lead to obesity and related conditions such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Now this new study reveals that working at home and falling into the Fatty foods trap can negatively effect our ability to do our jobs. I wonder how that will effect the decisions employers make about changing their office models?
~ Maggie J.