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Relationship between your diet and labor productivity
A healthy and balanced diet is essential since this is one of the best indicators of our health
You’ve probably heard how harmful it is to eat right before bed, eat junk food regularly, or eat and drink too much.
Well, since these questions have been, exactly, the object of a new study published by the University of North Carolina, which has tried to analyze the relationship between food and labor productivity.
And, the results of this study, unsurprising, reflect the importance of diet in the well-being of people, both from a physical and psychological point of view.
Next, we will review some of the main keys of this study.
Changes in behavior, concentration, and performance
First, the authors of this study have shown how diet produces changes in behavior, concentration and performance in the workplace. So, a healthy diet generates more positive results.
By contrast, follow unhealthy eating behaviors, such as having large meals just before bedtime, makes people less helpful and more withdrawn the next day at work, resulting in lower work productivity.
As Seonghee “Sophia” Cho, study author and assistant professor of psychology at North Carolina State University, points out:
The Scientific Method Applied by the University of North Carolina
To find out if there is a correlation or causality between unhealthy eating and work productivity, the researchers looked at 97 employees, with a full-time contract, in the United States.
And, these employees responded three times a day, for 10 consecutive working days, to the different questions asked by the researchers. The latter, for their part, classified as “Unhealthy eating” to those participants who felt they had eaten too much food just before bed, too much junk food, or large amounts of food and drink at night.
And, the results were like, those people whose diet was classified as unhealthy, were more likely to report physical problems the next morning, such as headaches or stomach aches and diarrhea, or emotional tensions, such as shame or guilt.
Consequences in the workplace
The aforementioned consequences, as the researchers claim, in turn had an impact on workers’ labor productivity the next day, reflecting the short-term effects of eating an unhealthy diet.
Additionally, this type of diet is also attributed:
- A decrease in “Helpful behavior”(Motivate colleagues and go the extra mile when not necessary)
- Greater “Work abstinence behavior”(Avoid work-related situations).
In short, although many experts have already noted the close relationship between food and physical and emotional well-being, This study has corroborated the effects that unhealthy eating generates, in the short term, on productivity labor. As the author highlights, “the big bottom line here is that we now know that unhealthy eating can have almost immediate effects on performance in the workplace.”
Finally, we remember that you can find many more health news in our magazine.