Stress is caused by factors that are both external (like money and relationships) and internal (like your thoughts and feelings). Bouts of stress can be useful—for example, when it helps us avoid danger or motivates us to perform well in certain situations.
However, chronic stress can lead to trouble sleeping, poor appetite, and irritability with friends and family. Over time, not being able to manage stress effectively has been linked to negative effects on memory, cognition, immune health, cardiovascular health, and gastrointestinal function.
There’s no way to ensure you’ll live a stress-free life, but some research has suggested that including certain foods in your diet may help you even in times of trauma or strife.
Along with adopting stress-busting lifestyle habits like exercising, meditating, and getting enough quality sleep, here are six foods that may help you naturally manage stress (or at the very least, nourish your body without making you more stressed out).
Walnuts
Walnuts provide a satisfying crunch and delicious flavor to many recipes. Studies have shown that eating walnuts may also offer some benefits in the stress-management department.
When researchers compared two groups of college students (one who did not eat nuts and one who ate two ounces of walnuts a day for 16 weeks) they found that the nut-eaters experience:
Improvements in markers of self-reported mental health status A protective effect against some of the negative impacts of academic stress, including reductions in stress biomarkers and protection of the diversity of the gut bacteria in female studentsImproved self-reported sleep scores in the longer term
While more research is needed to find out how eating patterns that include walnuts could influence the brain or affect mental health, we do know that walnuts have a unique matrix of bioactive nutrients and phytochemicals.
In fact, walnuts are the only nut that’s an excellent source of omega-3 ALA per serving (2.5g/oz), which could be one reason why researchers saw some mental health benefits in their study.
Avocados
The ever-popular topping for ho-hum toast could also be one of the best foods to help lower your stress levels. Avocados are a natural source of magnesium and there is evidence that magnesium deficiency could make the body more susceptible to stress.
You’ll be hard-pressed to find quality research data directly showing that eating an avocado will be your ticket to a stress-free day, but eating magnesium-rich foods like avocado could support that goal.
If you aren’t an avocado fan, dark chocolate, dairy milk, and nuts can fuel your body with this key mineral, too.
Salmon
Salmon is one of the best dietary sources of DHA omega-3 fatty acids. Getting enough of this “healthy fat” in your diet is linked to better stress resilience and other positive mental health effects.
You’ll also get plenty of other stress-management nutrients, including B vitamins and magnesium, in a serving of salmon.
Green Tea
Green tea has natural plant compounds that support your health in different ways. One compound found in green tea is an amino acid called L-theanine that’s associated with improvements in mood, cognition, and reduced stress and anxiety-like symptoms.
A cup of green tea is also a versatile beverage—it tastes great and provides you with these soothing compounds whether it’s hot or iced.
Chocolate
There might be a scientific explanation for why many people crave chocolate when they’re feeling stressed out. One study in 2014 found that consuming 40 grams of dark and milk chocolate daily for two weeks was an effective way to reduce participants’ perceived stress.
The stress-reducing effect of chocolate might be related to its cocoa polyphenols, which have been shown to reduce stress in highly stressed people and people with normal stress levels.
That said, the color of chocolate choice matters—you won’t get those powerful polyphenols from white chocolate. Chocolate with a higher cacao percentage will give you those polyphenols and often have less sugar, too.
Fruits and Vegetables
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), only 10% of Americans eat the recommended amount of produce every day. There are plenty of health benefits to getting more fruits and vegetables in your day, and helping you deal with life’s stressors might be another to add to the list.
As far as the research goes, it doesn’t appear that choosing one fruit or vegetable over another has any major effect on stress levels. That said, eating more produce does seem to be associated with lower stress for some people.
For example, a 2021 study that looked at participants’ daily reports of stress and their produce intake found that higher stress levels appeared to be linked to eating fewer fruits and veggies that day.
