We all know stress is bad for us. And we all know a healthy diet is good for us.

But a recent study conducted at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus has demonstrated for the first time that stress can be harmful enough to women that it can actually counteract the benefits of eating well.

The results of the study, published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, were unexpected.

“I’m a long-time stress researcher, so in some ways it takes quite a bit to surprise me,” said Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, lead author of the study and director of Ohio State University’s Institute for Behavioral Medicine. “But this did surprise me.”

Fifty-eight women, whose average age was 53, participated in the study over two days.

Subjects were given “standardized meals the day before” testing, Ms. Kiecolt-Glaser said, so that they would all be on a level playing field.

The next day, they were fed a meal of biscuits and gravy with eggs and turkey sausage; it contained 930 calories with 60 grams of fat. One version was high in saturated fat from palm oil, while the other was high in healthier monounsaturated fat from sunflower oil. The women were selected at random to receive one meal or the other, and blood work was analyzed after eating to test for levels of c-reactive protein, serum amyloid A, ICAM-1 (intercellular adhesion molecule 1), and VCAM-1 (vascular cell adhesion molecule 1).

“Their importance is related to cardiovascular risk, that people who have higher levels” of these markers — indicative of inflammation — are at greater risk “for cardiovascular disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes,” Ms. Kiecolt-Glaser said.

The research team found that inflammation levels were, as one might predict, elevated after eating the meal with saturated fat and lower after eating the meal prepared with sunflower oil.

But if the women had been involved in a stressful situation the day before, the disparity disappeared: inflammation increased regardless of which meal they ate.

“What was surprising about it, to me,” Ms. Kiecolt-Glaser said, was that “we had expected that stress could impact inflammation after the meal. But I was expecting that stress would boost responses to the saturated fat meal. And instead, we found that it boosted responses” to the healthier version.

To determine exposure to stress, researchers employed the Daily Inventory of Stressful Events questionnaire, measuring life events (arguments, work issues, etc.) that the study participants had encountered within 24 hours of eating the chosen meal and having their blood tested.

“The kinds of things the women were describing were, in fact, not earth-shattering,” Ms. Kiecolt-Glaser said. But they were the types of stress that many women encounter daily.

One woman reported having a babysitter cancel at the last minute, when she and her husband both had commitments and were unable to bring their child along. “They were desperately trying to find someone who could help,” Ms. Kiecolt-Glaser said.

Another dealt with a test subject’s son having spilled paint all over the floor. And there was “a woman who was trying to care for her mother who had cognitive problems, and the mother was really resisting the help.”

“What we’re seeing in this study is that stress really alters the way that our bodies respond to different kinds of meals,” she said.

Knowing that stress can compromise a healthy diet is not an excuse to binge on fatty junk food for comfort when stress rears its ugly head, though.

Martha Belury, co-author of the paper and a professor of human nutrition at Ohio State University, agreed. She said that it’s important to eat a consistently healthy diet so that when stressful events occur, baseline health is better. Inflammation develops over time, rather than occurring immediately, so an overall diet that includes fruits, vegetables, and healthy monounsaturated fats — olive, canola, sunflower, and peanut oils, as well as avocados — is important for keeping risk low.

As for good strategies to lessen stress, Ms. Kiecolt-Glaser said, “Exercise and asking for help are both great.” She also said that “close personal relationships really help during times of stress,” as does “getting enough sleep.”

Contact Mary Bilyeu at mbilyeu@theblade.com or 419-724-6155 or on Twitter @foodfloozie.

First Published October 17, 2016, 4:00 a.m.