By Michael J. Critelli | MakeUsWell Newsletter, 

Most discussions of nutrition, particularly in corporate settings, assume a simple equation: better food choices lead to better health, energy, and productivity. Cafeterias are upgraded, wellness apps are offered, and employees and other consumers are encouraged to “eat healthier.” Yet many organizations and individuals see little improvement in metabolic health, fatigue, or healthcare costs, even among highly motivated professionals.

The reason is uncomfortable but increasingly clear: stress, particularly at work, often determines whether nutrition helps or harms.

Food does not operate in a vacuum. The body’s response to what we eat is shaped by the internal signals it receives at the moment of eating, and those signals are heavily influenced by stress, sleep, and workload design. In many workplaces, stress quietly overrides nutrition.

A simple explanation of what’s really happening

When people eat, their bodies must decide what to do with that fuel. Use it immediately? Store it? Build muscle? Protect against perceived threat?

Those decisions are guided by hormones: essentially internal text messages telling the body how safe or threatened it is.

• In a low-stress state, the body is willing to use food for energy, repair, and long-term health.
• In a high-stress state, the body becomes defensive. It prioritizes quick energy and storage, even if the food itself is “healthy.”

This is why two people can eat the same lunch and experience different outcomes. The difference is not discipline or knowledge. It is the stress environment surrounding the individual..

How workplace stress makes nutrition work worse

Chronic workplace stress, tight deadlines, constant interruptions, unclear priorities, long hours, late-night emails, and, to a greater extent than ever, the fear of losing a job to an AI-infused alternative, keeps the body in a prolonged state of alert.

In that state:

• Blood sugar rises more easily
• Insulin works less efficiently
• Fat storage is favored, especially around the abdomen
• Muscle repair and metabolic flexibility decline

The practical result is counterintuitive but common: employees who eat well still gain weight, lose energy, and feel mentally foggy. Nutrition is not failing because food is wrong. It is failing because stress changes how food is processed.

Late lunches eaten while multitasking, dinners consumed after 10 p.m., and caffeine-fueled workdays followed by short sleep compound the problem. Even high-quality meals are metabolically “misread” by a stressed system.

How the same workplace can make nutrition work better

The inverse is equally true, and far less discussed.

When workplace stress is managed intelligently, nutrition becomes dramatically more effective without changing food choices. Lower stress improves how the body uses food, not just what food is chosen.

In lower-stress environments:

• Blood sugar responses flatten
• Appetite regulation improves naturally
• Energy lasts longer after meals
• Cravings decrease without willpower
• Muscle maintenance improves, even with aging

This explains why people often experience health improvements on vacation without changing what they eat very much. The stress signal changes, and food suddenly “works.”

Timing, recovery, and work design matter more than menus

From a leadership perspective, the most powerful nutrition interventions rarely look like nutrition interventions at all.

They include:

• Predictable work rhythms that allow regular meals
• Reduced late-night communication expectations
• Protected recovery time after intense work periods
• Fewer unnecessary urgencies that keep stress chronically elevated
• More thoughtful, caring and intelligent attentiveness to both the intended and unintended consequences of leadership words and actions.

Even small improvements in these areas can make existing nutrition programs far more effective.

Conversely, organizations that promote healthy eating while maintaining constant urgency and fear inadvertently undermine their own investments. They are asking food to fix what stress is breaking.

Why this matters for productivity and cost

Metabolic stress does not stay confined to waistlines or lab values. It shows up as:

• Afternoon energy crashes
• Reduced cognitive endurance
• Slower recovery from illness
• Increased musculoskeletal complaints
• Rising healthcare utilization

These outcomes are often attributed to aging or individual lifestyle choices. In reality, they are frequently system-level stress effects, amplified by how nutrition is processed under pressure.

Reframing for CEOs and others in leadership positions

For CEOs and other senior  leaders, the critical insight is this:

Nutrition success is not primarily a personal responsibility problem. It is a signaling environment problem, and leaders shape the signaling environment.

Workplace stress can either:

• Turn good nutrition into fuel for resilience and performance 

                                                   or

• Turn good nutrition into stored energy, fatigue, and inflammation

That choice is made not in the cafeteria, but in how work is structured, paced, and led.

When executives understand this, wellness stops being a side program and becomes part of operational design. The goal shifts from telling employees to “eat better” to creating conditions where eating better actually works.

That is not just a health strategy. It is a leadership one.

The broader implications of this research.

Historically, workplaces were the major sources of stress. Regrettably, the stress from social media, political and social-cultural divisions, and the sense that external events are outside our control are a stress multiplier. 

That is why CEOs and other leaders have an even bigger opportunity and challenge to make good nutritional choices and optimize potential.