Food For Thought

Eating for two — the body and the brain

Mood is probably the biggest reason I changed the way I eat, but strangely, the one I talk about the least.

Learning more about the role of diet and mood has been a massive game-changer in how I manage my anxiety. The physical benefits of eating healthy are constantly discussed, but to me it seems like the connection of food and mood has often been ignored. Felice Jacka, a leading nutritional psychiatrist, states “what we put in our mouths matters to our mental health”; the brain, after all, is a bodily organ, so why wouldn’t what’s beneficial for the body be beneficial for the brain too?

Obviously, this does not discredit the role of medication and therapy where its needed, but for most people it can be a very useful self-help tool for making improvements to the way you feel holistically. Feeling physically healthier in itself can have a positive effect on mood, but more research is emerging on the way food can directly affect the way you think and feel — so here’s some of what I know about the connection of food and mood to give you, well, some food for thought…

Similarly, author and mental health activist Matt Haig has described the importance of eating well on his mental wellbeing, sharing on Instagram that eating “real food rather than food whose ingredients read like the credits to an Avengers movie” is a practical way he helps himself.

And if me, Mills, and Haig alone aren’t enough to convince you that food really can affect your mood, leading health charity provides extensive information on the way diet affects mood, my top 5 take-aways being:

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