Heroes Not Zombies

(by special request of damewiggy….) What are the links between food and mental health? The short answer is definite but complex. There is growing evidence of links between food and mental health and the Mental Health Foundation in the UK launched a campaign with Sustain last year to raise awareness of this. Their website is a great place to start and they have a lot of really useful studies and information there. MIND also has a very balanced summary of the issue. What these reports and articles are saying is that there seems to be growing evidence of the part played by food in mental health. From first principles this makes a lot of sense – after all the brain is an organ of the body and it’s function is dependent on it’s nutritional supplies amongst other things. Also, we are increasingly getting a clearer picture about the mind and understanding it’s not all about the brain. Both the concepts of the embodied mind and the extended mind force us to consider that the mind is a more complex phenomenon than just the product of brain function. This has enormous implications for us in terms of considering the health of the body, and of the contexts within which the individual lives. Part of this is about nutrition – and here I’m thinking of nutrition as not only about the biology and chemistry of food but of the effects of eating patterns, the social impacts of what’s eaten when and with whom, the memories, associations and expectations that we tie to particular foods, the connections between eating and the health of relationships, and so on.

It’s a complex issue.

But it doesn’t stop there, in my opinion. Because everybody is different. And not only do we not have individual and different food preferences but the same food will have different effects on different people. It’s a good idea to become more self-aware about this – what effects do different foods have on you?  Are there some things which seem to drain your energy, make you irritable, to make you happy and give you an energy burst? Are there certain foods you crave? Others which disgust you, and yet others which upset you in some way? Your answers to those questions won’t be the same as other people’s answers but they are the important answers for you. Self-observation, raising your awareness around your own relationship to food is way more useful than any expensive, and probably dubious tests.

Let me finish with a personal story. I’m an optimistic, energetic and pretty cheerful character. I went on the Atkins Diet once. I did it for four weeks. I felt exhausted. My legs were so heavy I could hardly climb the four flights of stairs to my flat. And worst of all I felt depressed. Utterly. It was if someone had put a pleasure filter between me and the world and is was sucking all the joy out of life before life got to me. Within hours of stopping the diet I was my good old cheery energetic self again. Now, I know a lot of people who have an utterly different experience on the exact same diet. But that was my experience and it taught me what kind of diet is definitely not good for me.