How happy do you feel when you eat a juicy peach, hearty soup, or sweet sticky rice? What we put in our bodies has a significant impact on our physical health, and less understood is the effect on mental health.
That’s the subject of the new book “Eat and Flourish: How Food Supports Emotional Well-Being.” Author Mary Beth Albright, a writer with the Washington Post, explores the relationship between food and mood — for good or ill.
“Everything works into what our food pleasure is. And a lot of us just think about flavor as being on the tongue, but it's really created in the brain,” Albright tells KCRW.
Key to that food pleasure is what Albright describes as the brain-gut connection.
“A lot of people think that the nervous system is just in the brain, those neurons in your brain and spinal cord. It's not. It's all over your body. And your gut has its own nervous system called the enteric nervous system and it's in constant conversation with your brain.”
She adds, “You can start to create your own comfort foods, which we do every single day. You can create your own comfort foods by associating different moods, like happiness, with certain things,” she explains. “You can use your intense emotions … to recreate and retrain your brain for comfort food. Because there's always neuroplasticity, including around food.”
Albright says the microbiome in your guts can affect cravings, sleep, and even anxiety. She points to research in mice from Irish professor John Cryan that suggests that early childhood trauma can change the microbiome.
“What [researchers] wound up doing was giving the mouse with anxiety and depression symptoms a probiotic, which is live bacteria that are found often in yogurt. … And the decrease in the anxiety and depression symptoms were equal to the antidepressant Lexapro.”
She adds that there’s also evidence that foods high in industrial oils such as chips can cause inflammation.
“Those inflammatory compounds can get through to your brain and wreak havoc with your emotional well-being. So … you need whole foods … like fruits and vegetables, fatty fish, whole grains … and just eating those foods will reduce that inflammation, which will reduce your risk of mental health issues.”