You don’t have to be a doctor or trained Nutritional therapist to know that eating healthy food is good for you. If you eat loads of junk, sweeties and processed foods, you’ll feel slow and lethargic. If you do it long enough you gain, weight get de-motivated and generally gloomy. If you eat healthy foods and your motivated, you’ll have bags of energy. Well that’s the theory anyway. For me this raises two questions, is this actually happening or a placebo for buying from the organic food shop and what actually constitutes as a healthy diet. Just because you bought cakes and chocolate from the health food shop, doesn’t make it healthy.
A recent study that involved over 15,000 people found that eating a Mediterranean style diet or other healthy diet comprising of fruit, vegetables, legumes, and nuts and low in processed meats, has been shown there is a depression nutrition connection.
This is a big study and the first time such a large scale research project has been conducted with a depression nutrition connection in mind.
The researchers found that eating foods such as nuts, legumes, fruits and vegetables are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, vitamins and minerals all help with mental stability. Eating foods such as meat and sweets which are heavy in animal fats: saturated and trans fatty acids weren’t good for preventing mental health issues such as depression.
One very interesting finding from the research looking at the depression nutrition connection was that there was a tipping point with the strictness of the diet. Once people ‘tipped’ their benefit from the diet plateaued. Which meant that as long as the participant stuck to the diet as a guide and followed it fairly well they benefitted just as much as someone who followed it religiously. People who made some effort but not very strict at all had no benefit, almost as much as someone not doing it at all. Great bit of advice for the superfood fanatics.
All the information on the depression nutrition connection was sourced from:
The above post is reprinted from materials provided by BioMed Central.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference:
Almudena Sánchez-Villegas, Patricia Henríquez-Sánchez, Miguel Ruiz-Canela, Francisca Lahortiga, Patricio Molero, Estefanía Toledo, Miguel A. Martínez-González. A longitudinal analysis of diet quality scores and the risk of incident depression in the SUN Project. BMC Medicine, 2015; 13 (1) DOI: 10.1186/s12916-015-0428-y