Is your anxiety getting worse because of your diet? According to science, yes

Many of us grab for junk food—a chocolate bar for an afternoon pick-me-up or a donut to treat ourselves after a demanding day—when worry strikes. Here's the twist, though: eating fatty meals may actually make us feel more anxious, according to study from the University of Colorado Boulder. According to their research, a high-fat diet altered the intestinal flora of the mice, resulting in alterations in brain chemistry that heighten anxiety.

Professor Christopher Lowry, the lead author, stated, "Everyone knows that these [high-fat foods] are not healthy foods, but we tend to think of them strictly in terms of a little weight gain." Health organizations recommend that men and women consume no more than 30g and 20g, respectively, of saturated fat per day, or roughly 11% of daily calories from food. Nonetheless, a lot of people in the UK consume more than this; the US Centers for Disease Control estimate that 36% of an average diet is made up of fat.

The teenage rats were divided into two groups, and the effects of this division on the rodents' mental health were examined. Nine weeks were spent on a conventional diet consisting of 11% fat, while the other group consumed a high-fat diet with 45% fat. In order to evaluate gut flora, the researchers gathered feces samples for their study, which was published in the journal Biological Research. Tests were conducted at the conclusion of the trial to see whether the participants' behavior had changed as a result of the diet. In addition to being noticeably bigger than the rats in the other group, the rats on the high-fat diet also had considerably less diverse gut microbiomes. To be more precise, they contained far less bacteria from the Bacteroidetes group and considerably more from the Firmicutes category.