How Food Affects Your Mental Wellbeing

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Too often, we look at the number of calories on the packaging of the food. Counting how many calories you consume and how many calories you burn is a good way to lose excess weight and get in shape. There are many apps that help with that process. I have a few friends on Instagram who do food reviews for restaurants, and they consume an insane number of calories daily, but they all workout 2-3 hours a day and are in good physical shape. As long as you burn more calories than you consume, they say, you are good… and so they believe.

Indeed, the calories we intake from consuming food are the energy source to power our bodies, and we all need to be mindful of how many calories we consume on a daily basis. Still, we also need to be mindful of the quality of the food that we consume.

Raise your hand if you or someone you know has ever uttered the words “I don’t care about the quality of the food” or “It doesn’t matter to me what I eat. I only eat to survive.” I know I have often heard from people who consider themselves too busy or not to be a “foodie.”  The notion is not to spend a lot of time and money on the food we eat, not that there is anything wrong with doing so. We all need to be more mindful of what we eat because in addition to fueling our bodies, what we eat, can also affect our mental wellbeing. Here is how:

According to the National Center for Health Research (NCHR), our bodies consist of nearly three pounds of Bacteria. While some bacteria can be toxic, most of the bacteria in our bodies are necessary for maintaining our physical and mental wellbeing. “The bacteria on our skin, in our airways, and our digestive system are the first line of defense against foreign “invaders” (pathogens) that can cause infection and other problems,” Says the NCHR. In addition to the immune system, there is a close correlation between the bacteria in your gastrointestinal tract and your emotions. The bacteria in your gastrointestinal tract are responsible for producing neurotransmitters, which are the chemical substances that constantly carry messages from the gut to the brain. Dopamine and serotonin are two of the commonly known neurotransmitters that regulate your emotions and mental wellness.

You can promote the growth of good bacteria in your body by eating healthy food, which can positively affect the production of good neurotransmitters such as Dopamine and serotonin. By contrast, when you consume unhealthy food, the production is impacted negatively, and so is your mood.

In Volume 131 of the International Review of Neurobiology, in the section related to Gut Microbiome and Behavior, it is suggested that “changes in diet around the world mean that populations are now increasingly reliant on highly processed, poor quality foods, which have been linked to increased risk for a mental disorder.” The author continues, “Improving diet quality and subsequent gut health may have benefits for individuals’ mental health, as well as the mental health of future generations.”

According to the Harvard Medical School’s health blog, there is a 25% to 30% lower chance of depression among those who have traditional diets such as Mediterranean or Japanese than those who follow a Western diet.

Now that we know that food can affect our emotions and mental health, it is important to pay more attention to what we eat and how it affects our well-being. We at Amomē want to help you make smarter choices that contribute positively to your mental and physical health. Every recipe in our blog digs deeper into how each ingredient in the recipe will help you maintain a healthy diet and would support your mental wellness.