Stress Eating: Why You Crave Comfort Food and What to Do About It

Status: PUBLISHED to articles.ts

This article has been added to the content store at `src/lib/content/articles.ts` and will be served at `/blog/stress-eating-why-you-crave-comfort-food`.

Strategic Rationale

• Long-tail content strategy: First article beyond the four anchor pieces. Targets specific search queries (“why do I stress eat”, “comfort food cravings”) rather than broad category terms.
• Cross-category bridge: Connects stress and nutrition categories, increasing internal linking opportunities and assessment funnel entry points.
• Anti-diet-culture positioning: Every competitor in this space either shames the reader or sells a diet. Our positioning — “this is biology, not weakness” — is a genuine differentiator.
• Assessment funnel: Article naturally drives to the wellness assessment by explaining that stress eating is interconnected with sleep, nutrition, and movement.

Key Research Citations (9 references)

Dallman et al. (2003) — PNAS — comfort foods dampen HPA stress response

Epel et al. (2001) — cortisol reactivity drives calorie-dense food consumption

Tomiyama et al. (2010) — caloric restriction raises cortisol (dieting makes it worse)

Macht (2008) — five-way model of how emotions affect eating

Avena et al. (2008) — sugar addiction neurochemistry

Kristeller & Wolever (2011) — MB-EAT for binge eating

Linardon et al. (2017) — CBT meta-analysis for eating disorders

Gearhardt et al. (2009) — Yale Food Addiction Scale

Balban et al. (2023) — structured breathing reduces stress

Content Count: Now 5 published articles

• Stress anchor ✓
• Sleep anchor ✓
• Nutrition anchor ✓
• Movement anchor ✓
• Stress eating (long-tail) ✓ ← NEW