Why Stress Sends You to Sugar and Snacks

Deadlines pile up, stress spikes, and suddenly you’re reaching for ice cream or chips. It’s not weakness—it’s ancient wiring. The same survival instincts that once pushed us to seek energy-dense foods now collide with a modern world of endless supply.

Deadlines pile up. Your day spins out of control. The mind hums like a swarm of bees.
And then—almost without thinking—you reach for ice cream, pizza, or chips.

The first bite doesn’t solve your problems, but for a moment the edges soften. Stress eases. You feel a little steadier.

Why does your brain pull you toward food in these moments—especially the heavy, salty, sugary kinds you swore you’d cut back on?

The answer isn’t weakness. It’s wiring.

Stress as a Survival Signal

For our ancestors, stress wasn’t an email backlog or an awkward meeting. It was a predator in the brush or an empty food supply. In that world, stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol prepared the body to fight, flee, or endure scarcity. At the same time, the brain primed us to refuel — to seek food that could quickly restore energy.

Robert Sapolsky explains in Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers that this system works brilliantly in short bursts. Stress burns energy, then food replenishes it. The problem is modern stress: long, chronic, and rarely burned off by movement. The survival program is still running — but now it steers us toward the snack cupboard.

Comfort Foods as “Survival Foods”

In ancestral environments, calorie-dense food was rare and precious. Fatty meat, sweet fruit, rich nuts — these were jackpots that evolution rewarded us for seeking. Dopamine, the brain’s “reward signal,” lit up whenever we found them.

Fast forward to today: the same instincts fire for chips, cookies, or fast food engineered to be hyper-palatable. Michael Moss, in Salt Sugar Fat, documents how modern foods are designed to mimic the survival hits our brains never stopped chasing. What once helped us through famine now fuels late-night binges.

Cortisol and the Craving Circuit

Stress isn’t just mental. Rising cortisol increases appetite and biases us toward high-sugar, high-fat foods. Neuroscientist Sarah Leibowitz’s work shows how these foods activate the reward system in ways that temporarily blunt stress. The brain trades long-term health for short-term relief, and in the moment, that feels like the right deal.

Food as Emotional Soothing

Food has always been more than fuel. In ancient communities, eating together reinforced social bonds, offered comfort, and lowered stress through connection. That wiring persists. Many comfort foods are tied to memory—your grandmother’s cooking, a childhood treat, the warmth of family meals. When stress strips away stability, the brain seeks safety in the familiar.

Spot Your Inner Caveman

Notice the moments when your inner caveman shows up in modern life. By naming these patterns, you build awareness and start steering with your wiring instead of against it.

Think of the last time stress had you reaching for comfort food. Was it really hunger—or your caveman brain chasing quick energy?

Decision-Making Under Stress

Stress tips the brain’s balance of power. The amygdala—the threat detector—flares up, while the prefrontal cortex—the rational planner—goes quiet. Research published in Biological Psychiatry shows how this shift makes us more reactive, more impulsive, and less able to weigh long-term consequences. In other words: the cookie wins.

Why It Feels So Hard to Resist

In the past, stress almost always meant physical exertion—running, fighting, enduring. Movement helped regulate stress hormones, and food restored what was lost. In modern life, stress means sitting still with elevated cortisol and an open fridge. The old cycle breaks. The craving remains.

A Way Forward

You can’t erase the wiring, but you can work with it.

Notice the cue: “I’m craving chips—what am I really feeling right now?”
Redefine comfort: a walk, a call with a friend, music loud enough to shake loose the day.
Rewire the environment: keep healthier foods visible, make the indulgences less convenient.
Remember: the instinct isn’t a flaw, it’s a survival system out of context.

The Takeaway

Craving comfort food during stress isn’t proof of weakness. It’s proof of history. Your body is replaying a survival strategy that worked for millennia — grab energy now, deal with the rest later.

The mismatch is that “later” never comes in today’s world of chronic stress and endless supply.

Once you see the instinct for what it is, you don’t have to obey it blindly. You can choose how to feed it—sometimes with food, sometimes with movement, sometimes with connection.

Because the real comfort doesn’t come from calories. It comes from reclaiming control over how you respond.

References & Further Reading

Robert Sapolsky — Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers