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Food And Mood:
How What You Eat
Changes Who You Are
Can you eat your
way to happiness? The link between food and mood,
mental health, and behavior is a lot more solid
than your average TV news program is likely to key
you in on.
Most go through their entire lives without
connecting the dots, but what you swallow plays a
huge roll in determining your happiness and
behavior, and can make the difference between
thriving and flailing your way through life.
It wasn't until early 2003, when I first started
experimenting with a low fat cooked vegan diet
based around whole foods, that I noticed I was
considerably happier than I'd been at any point in
my life. At first, I brushed aside the realization
as a figment of my imagination or a temporary
high.
Eventually, after simply
being happier than usual for so long, I was
convinced there actually was a connection, and
when I started eating a raw
food diet in 2005 as a way of addressing my
colitis,
the mood difference became profound. Suddenly I
seemed to always bounce back to a pretty steady
level of happiness, no matter what emotional
issues cropped up.
Food And Mood:
Can Good Eats Make
you Happy?
My own
increase in happiness during dietary
upgrades over the years made me realize
something was going on, but the vast majority of
people eating great diets I've met have been
happier and more upbeat than the general
population.
Those eating the worst
diets seem more likely to be depressed, stolid,
and dispassionate, and it's pretty usual to hear
those eating healthy
low fat raw vegan diets based around fruit
and greens comment on how they're just
inexplicably happier since their dietary switch.
My mind at first
rebelled against this connection, and I wondered
at the chicken or egg quality of the subject. Do
happier people just eat better, or does a superior
diet actually have some unexpected ability to lift
our spirits?
It's a tough subject to
get empirical evidence on because regardless of
diet, no two people live the same life and
happiness is kind of subjective, which obviously
leaves huge room for the thousands of outside
factors and personal norms that affect our how we
might describe our mood to wreak havoc.
Recently, though, some
interesting science has started to indicate that
food and mood are closely intertwined.
Food And Mood:
Are Vegetarians And
Vegans Really Happier?
There's plenty of science connecting eating meat,
eggs, and dairy
to increased risk of all sorts of physical
diseases, but the connection with improved mood is
fairy recent, and sometimes comes from unexpected
places.
The Seventh-day
Adventist Church is one of the few Christian
groups to suggest vegetarian and vegan diets to
its adherents along with abstinence from smoking
and alcohol,
regular exercise, and other healthy
lifestyle elements. It does not, however,
demand compliance with these values as a
requirement of membership, and a fair number of
Adventists eat animal foods.
Recently, a group of researchers had the bright idea
of looking at Adventists who share a common faith
and close-knit church to see if there was a
difference between the happiness levels of the meat
eaters and the vegetarians and vegans among them.

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Since happiness is
subjective, the researchers asked the Adventists
to record whenever a negative emotion was weighing
them down, as well as feelings of stress,
depression, and anxiety. The ones who abstained
from meat all reported having much less negative
emotion, depression, stress, and anxiety than
omnivorous members of their church (1).
What's going on here?
The researchers noted
two things: First, the vegetarians and vegans had
much lower intakes and circulation of arachidonic
acid, a substance found only in animal foods that
is known to inflame the brain and may contribute
to brain disorders like Alzheimer's Disease (2).
They also noted the
inclusion of more plant foods in the diets of the
meat abstainers may have played into the food and
mood connection. Vegetarians are noted for having
higher circulating concentrations of antioxidants
and less oxidative stress than meat eaters, which
is a likely a result of their plant-focused diets
(3, 4).
Food And Mood:
Switching From Meat To Plants Brings Results
The Adventist study was interesting, but failed to
show an average omnivore could improve their
happiness by abstaining from animal foods and
embracing fruits and vegetables.
An intervention study
has done just that, though, and seems to indicate
some pretty convincing cause and effect is at work
(5).
Thirty nine
omnivores were divided up into three groups in the
study. The first went on eating meat, dairy, and
eggs.
The second ate only one
type of meat: fish; they also continued to eat
eggs and dairy. The third group ate no meat or
eggs, but did eat dairy. The study lasted just two
weeks, but had profound effects for the
participants.
Although the fish group
was slightly happier than the omnivorous group
(the difference was not statistically
significant), the vegetarians dominated the other
two groups in terms of their happiness levels,
recording many fewer incidences of depression,
anxiety, stress, and also experiencing a much more
stable mood, with fewer negative emotional
fluctuations in their day to day lives.
So it seems reasonable
to say that embracing even a moderate dietary
improvement like going
vegetarian and replacing the removed meat
with calories from whole plant foods can make you
feel appreciably happier in a fairly short amount
of time.
Food and Mood:
Can A Healthier Body
Lead To A Healthier Mind?
If you're going to undergo a dietary shift
like going vegetarian for health reasons, it's easy
to imagine it would cause stress. After all,
patients might fear giving up meat will lead to
social isolation, trouble eating out at restaurants,
or a decrease in the enjoyment they derive from
meals.
Researchers feared this result when they placed a
group of rheumatoid arthritis sufferers on
vegetarian diets in a study and compared them to
omnivores with the same disorder (6).
So they were surprised when at the end of the
year-long study, the patients on the vegetarian
diets not only had significantly reduced their
arthritis symptoms, but were testing much better
than the omnivores on their GHQ-20 test, a screening
device used by doctors for identifying minor
psychiatric and mood disorders like depression as
well as emotional stability and stress.
The researchers noted the possibility that
arachidonic acid was at play here, but also felt
there was another significant possibility: that
people who feel like they're inhabiting a healthy,
vital body free of major pains and diseases will
feel happier than those who are more ill.
Food and
Mood Researcher Conclusions
"Another possibility is that the
patients in the vegetarian group
experienced less psychological distress
because of the clinical improvement. It
is reasonable to assume that less pain,
shorter duration of morning stiffness,
better grip strength and less disability
would impose less psychological distress
on patients (6)."
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I think the above conclusion is something of an
understatement, and really just scratches the
surface the joys low
fat raw vegans experience. Are you still
suffering with colds every winter? I haven't had one
since 2005 when I started eating this way, and I
can't say I miss all those sore throats and the
inability to breath.
My body also looks better, is stronger, and recovers
much faster from soreness brought on by exercise. I
have way more energy to do what I love, so it's only
natural that I should be happier while experiencing
health.
Having once been borderline obese and stricken by
colitis, severe headaches, backaches, and numerous
other problems, the difference is profound. When
your body is vital, you feel the possibilities of
life more keenly, and a vegetarian diet, although an
improvement, doesn't come close to taking you to
your potential.
Escape
your disease today.
Food and Mood:
The Fruit And
Vegetable Connection
Depressed? A big part
of your problem, regardless of what
mood-depressing foods you may be eating, is that
you're probably not eating nearly enough whole
fruits and vegetables. The more you eat, the
happier you tend to be (7).
One common explanation for this is that the high
antioxidant intake from colorful fruits and veggies
prevents oxidative stress, which causes problems in
the brain, dips in mood, and depression (10). And
the less folate (found in green vegetables) you have
in your system, the more likely you are to be sad
(11, 12), so those huge
salads are important too.
Even women on weight loss diets (who are presumably
hungry) are happier when on carbohydrate-rich,
low-fat vegetarian diets with lots of fruits and
vegetables compared the more omnivorous, higher-fat
weight loss group they were compared against (8).
It simply pays to eat whole fruits and vegetables.
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Although juice
is not whole, it's interesting that just 250
ml of date juice can significantly lift mood, makes
a person calmer and more content, and even lead to
small improvements (measured in milliseconds) on
their reaction time on memory tests (9).
How many fruits and vegetables is enough? There's no
good research for us to draw a line in the sand, but
I'd personally say if you're not reimagining
what a normal healthy meal looks like and
embracing a raw
food diet you're not going to reach your
potential.
Food And
Mood:
Are All Plant
Foods Good For Mood?
Food and mood is a
complex subject, and just because, generally
speaking, fruits and vegetables are the best for
creating a solid baseline of happiness, there's
no evidence that all plant foods are good for
mood.
For instance, heavily-processed and fatty foods,
even if they're processed from plants, cause
more depression than less-processed, lower-fat
foods.
 In one
study, subjects who ate the most processed food
had the highest chance (60%) of depression. The
less processed junk and the more whole foods
consumed but the subjects, the less likely they
were to be depressed (13).
Another problematic plant food that surprises
many is grains, even in their whole state.
Grains are noted
for causing many health problems, but
their roll in affecting the mind is not well
studied.
Most grains contain addictive opioids. Wheat,
for instance, has been found to contain at least
15 opioid peptides (14). In human and animal
studies they've shown the ability to cross the
blood-brain barrier and affect the central
nervous system, which has the potential to alter
our mood, perception, cognition, and behavior
(15).
In an interview with raw food health.net Victoria
Everett explained how she can more or less
turn on and off the schizophrenic voices in her
head by including or removing certain foods from
her diet, one of which is bread, which certainly
seems to point to a pretty convincing food and
mood connection.
Increasingly, a number of mental disorders such
as cerebellar ataxia, peripheral neuropathy,
schizophrenia, and autism are being linked to
gluten (found in most types of grains), and some
patients removing it from their diets have seen
an improvement or abatement of symptoms. The
correlation between gluten and mental illness
remains highly controversial, however, with some
researchers maintaining that there is no
connection whatsoever (16).
Food And Mood:
Low Fat, High Carbs Diets Improve Your
Mood
A low
fat, high carbohydrate diet, raw or
cooked, is far superior to a high fat, low
carbohydrate diet in terms of blood
sugar stability (which plays a big part in
how we feel), and other diseases and disorders.
Yet being properly fueled by carbohydrates
from fruit and keeping our fat intake low
is also critical for mood stability and mental
performance.
Subjects fed a low fat, high carbohydrate
breakfast fare better than those consuming
medium fat/carb breakfasts and high fat, low
carb breakfast in mood and mental performance.
They experienced less mental fatigue and
dysphoria in the hours after the meal than the
high-fat participants (17).
In Another study subjects were "less vigorous,
imaginative, and antagonistic, and
significantly more dreamy, feeble, and
fatigued after the lower energy high-fat,
low-(carb) meal than after the higher energy
low-fat, high-(carb) meal. These results
suggest that in the morning, fat exerts a
greater depression on alertness and mood than
carbohydrate irrespective of a reduction in
energy content..." (18).
The same goes for athletes. A group of female
cyclists spent a week eating either a low carb,
high fat diet, medium carb/fat diet, or high
carb, low fat diet, and then rotated through the
other two dietary styles for a total of three
weeks (19).
When eating the low carb, high fat diets the
cyclists experienced significantly more tension,
depression, anger, and worse overall mood scores
than when they were eating medium carb/fat and
high cab/low fat diets.
It can be argued that the lack of carbohydrates
or the overabundance of fat is the cause of this
effect, but at the end of the day it doesn't
really matter very much. The more fat you eat,
the smaller the percentage of your diet derived
from carbohydrates is, and the more carbs you
eat, the less fat you're consuming. It's hard to
achieve low fat without high carb and vice
versa.
Food and Mood: Following Up
The single most effective dietary strategy I
know of for creating an advantageous food
and mood boost is adopting a low fat raw vegan
diet, which will also benefit your overall
health. It maximizes carbohydrate intake, lowers
fat intake, and puts all the right foods in your
body. In short, it's going to leave you feeling
great.
Learn what foods are ideal
for mental and physical health, and which
should be avoided.
I once suffered from depression, and although
dietary changes made a difference, it wasn't
until I started changing my lifestyle for the
better that things really started to change. I
write how I made this shift in The
Raw Food Lifestyle.
Food and Mood:
Sources
Want to look into the studies mentioned? The
citations for this food and mood article are all
listed here.
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