NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Feeling tired and stressed out? A new study provides evidence that a bowl of ice cream or mashed potatoes can lift your spirits.

Researchers from the University of Surrey in the UK investigated the effects of eating on mood in 40 women who were either non-emotional or emotional eaters. Emotional eaters tend to eat in response to negative feelings rather than hunger. All women recorded their moods over one day and described how they felt after eating.

Eating was found to lift the spirits of all the women, according to the study, which was presented last month at a meeting of the British Psychological Society in Blackpool, UK. Although emotional eaters reported feeling more hurried, irritated, tired, tense, angry and fearful than non-emotional eaters, there was no difference in the overall effect of food on a person's mood once they had eaten, to the surprise of the study authors.

"We were expecting eating to have a greater effect on mood in the emotional eaters, (which would explain) a means by which people become emotional eaters," Dr. Katherine Appleton told Reuters Health.

The findings suggest that emotional eating does not develop as a result of a greater effect of eating on mood in some individuals and not in others, Appleton said.

"It is perhaps more likely that emotional eating develops as a result of an effect of eating on mood (only) when that effect is required," she said.

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