# Stress, 'comfort' food, and obesity

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI · 2022 · $423,170

## Abstract

Project Summary
The majority of people report eating highly palatable, calorically-dense ‘comfort’ foods as a means of stress
relief. Indeed, individuals with a history of eating palatable foods have improved mood and reduced
physiological and emotional responses to stress. However, comfort feeding comes at a significant cost to
metabolic health, as stress-related eaters have higher BMIs and have more difficulty losing weight. Despite
clear evidence that comfort feeding is a primary cause of obesity for many people, we know very little about
why this is the case. This proposal addresses two critical gaps in our knowledge. First, it determines the
mechanisms by which comfort feeding gives stress relief in normal weight individuals. Second, it identifies the
extent that this stress relief is impaired during diet-induced obesity (DIO). This has important health
implications, as it suggests a vicious cycle whereby obese individuals continually increase their consumption of
palatable foods to maintain effective stress relief at the cost of worsening metabolic health. We propose to
study these relationships using a palatable ‘snacking’ paradigm in which rats are given twice-daily access to a
small amount of palatable sucrose solution, or water as a control. Rats given this limited sucrose intake (LSI)
paradigm reduce their chow intake to compensate for the calories in the sucrose and maintain normal body
weight, allowing us to isolate the mechanisms by which LSI reduces stress responses in normal weight
individuals. Indeed, LSI rats have attenuated neuroendocrine (HPA axis), behavioral, and metabolic (energy
mobilization) responses to a stress challenge. Moreover, LSI is unable to provide stress-blunting in DIO rats,
suggesting that obesity may increase the amount of palatable food needed to obtain stress relief. The LSI
paradigm therefore provides the unique opportunity to determine the mechanism underlying effective stress
relief in normal weight rodents, how these mechanisms are disrupted by DIO, and whether DIO escalates
sucrose intake thereby restoring effective stress relief at the cost of worsening metabolic health. Furthermore,
our prior work implicates forebrain regions (BLA, mPFC) as key sites for LSI stress relief, though the
neurocircuit mechanism that mediates this stress-blunting is not known. Our new preliminary data point to
endocannabinoids (eCB; endogenous marijuana-like molecules) acting within this circuit as this mechanism.
For instance, restraint stress rapidly increases BLA eCB (anandamide) content in LSI rats, but not water
controls, and eCB signaling in the BLA is known to blunt stress responses. Systemic cannabinoid receptor type
1 antagonism also prevents LSI stress relief. This proposal therefore addresses the hypothesis that palatable
foods curb stress responses by altering forebrain circuit function via eCB signaling during stress. The proposed
experiments determine the contribution of PL-BLA projections and forebrain eCB-...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10410481
- **Project number:** 5R01DK118292-03
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI
- **Principal Investigator:** Yvonne Michelle Ulrich-Lai
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $423,170
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2020-05-08 → 2024-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10410481

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10410481, Stress, 'comfort' food, and obesity (5R01DK118292-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10410481. Licensed CC0.

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