Late-Night Snacks and Your Work Performance

Your late-night snack habit might be affecting your daily work performance.

That's the takeaway of a new study led by researchers at North Carolina State University. This research found that people who ate unhealthy food at night were more likely to report feeling withdrawn or less helpful the next day at work.

Much past research has shown the effects of other lifestyle factors, such as exercise, on work performance. Now, this study may add late-night snacking to the list of things that can harm work performance.

"For the first time, we have shown that healthy eating immediately affects our workplace behaviors and performance," said study author Dr. Seonghee "Sophia" Cho, assistant professor of psychology at North Carolina State University, in a press release. "It is relatively well established that other health-related behaviors, such as sleep and exercise, affect our work. But nobody had looked at the short-term effects of unhealthy eating."

To conduct this research, the study authors asked 97 full-time workers in the US to answer questions three times each day for 10 working days. The questions were about the participants' emotional and physical state, work activities, and what they ate or drank.

Those who ate unhealthy food at night were more likely to report feeling physical symptoms the next morning. These included headaches and stomach distress. They were also more likely to report emotional difficulties, such as feeling guilty about what they ate.

The study participants who reported physical and emotional problems after eating unhealthily the night before were also more likely to report helping out less and being more withdrawn at work later that day, this research found.

This trend applied across most study participants. But those who were more emotionally stable were less likely to report problems from unhealthy eating.

"The big takeaway here is that we now know unhealthy eating can have almost immediate effects on workplace performance," Dr. Cho said. "However, we can also say that there is no single 'healthy' diet, and healthy eating isn't just about nutritional content. It may be influenced by an individual's dietary needs, or even by when and how they're eating, instead of what they're eating."

The study authors noted that some of the adverse effects they linked to unhealthy night eating could also have been tied to alcohol intake. This research did not examine that factor directly.

Concerned about your diet? Speak with your health care provider about healthy diet changes you can safely make.

This study was published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

Information on study funding sources and potential conflicts of interest was not available at the time of publication.