Changing Your Diet Can Help Tamp Down Depression, Boost Mood
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Our guests are always surprised to see the kids eating so much salad for dinner now, and our oldest recently even stopped adding dressing (8 y.o).
It seems you want to start humans young in the quest to get a good taste for vegetables, because I know many adults that just can’t stand them (didn’t have them as children).
Vegetables taste good to me. I like the taste of salad. I can microwave a bunch of frozen veggies and actually enjoy their flavor.
I'm not trying to brag, just saying that vegetables aren't inherently "bad tasting," it's just hyper-processed foods change your palate. Kids can eat healthy.
It's just never as simple as that though. I mean, of course you are correct- push for the good foods as much as you can. And yes that certainly has a positive effect, I'm not denying that.
BUT.
I'll just say this. I have two kids, 8 & 6. My 8 year old will eat most all vegetables. He can gobble down a massive bowl of peas and corn. He loves asparagus. He will eat brussel sprouts RAW (not cooked, only raw...). Loves carrots.
My 6 year old will pretty much only eat carrots. He's been introduced to the other vegetables all the time, sees his older brother eats them. He tries them, just doesn't like them. He'll eat carrots.
10lb bags of carrots from costco are a staple in our fridge.
So, just giving a counter example of no matter what I've done with one of them, he doesn't like the taste of other veggies. They both love their fruit. And having a pull-out vegetable/fruit drawer in the fridge is an ABSOLUTE LIFE SAVER. I would recommend that to all parents. Your kids can get their own snack- in the healthy drawer!
Anyway- none of what I said means I would do anything different. Or that you should. I think what you are doing is great. But I think with this stuff there is a lot of genetics/taste preference that we are banging our head against the walls with.. and it's hard.
I'll say this, my 8 year old is basically a little clone of me.. and I also love my fruits/vegetables. Whereas the 6 year old is much more like my wife, who wouldn't just choose fruit/veggies as a snack.
Nature vs nurture is a real bitch sometimes.
Not everything is learnt.
I attribute my dislike of many vegetables (b. sprout, okra, asparagus, broccoli) to how my middle- and high-school cafeterias always overcooked them into a wretched goo. I've developed a taste for some of these later in life when properly cooked but sprouts and okra are still inedible.
I'm the other way round from you: sprouts taste bitter, but celery is crunchy nothingness.
When I was in my 20's, I was relatively "hard core" about lifting weights and training. I weighed every meal, brought my own meals to cookouts, estimated macros as best I could. I was pretty obsessed with it all. As a result, I tried every diet out there, multiple times.
What I keep coming back to is low carb. By that I mean: Tons of broccoli, lettuce, cauliflower, zucchini, nuts (almonds and pecans primarily), fish, and beef. Plus, hard cheeses like Parmesan and Romano.
It's not hard to make these meals delicous. And, interestingly enough, I get "run down and depressed" when I don't eat this way. It's weird to admit that I crave vegetables like I would a piece of pizza. But, if we go out of town for a few days, and eat out a lot, I completely do.
I'll usually indulge in a carb/sugar binge once a week. Any more than that, I feel rubbish physically - bloated, sluggish, hungry, irritable.
Soda specifically is going to give you a nice big dose of sugars which your brain is just going to love. But what you’re also doing is kinda training your brain — well when I had that massive pure sugar dose I felt great, now I’m eating chicken and veggies, and wtf where’s the feel-good rush?
There’s nothing really wrong with that either if you’re at peace and doing as you’re doing, eating a holistically healthy diet. But I do wonder in audience with clinical depression — if those people might be gravitating towards foods that offer quick pick-me-ups that make them feel like themselves finally, but overall make their depression worse especially when the effect is quickly wears off
if I stick to meats and vegetables, mostly green kind, I don't have the munchies but I have to tend more to the "keto" side to keep it up. Meaning, no starches or sugars but lots of fats and green stuff; that was the key for me, lots of stuff that is green.
yeah there is science behind nearly every diet but the trick is finding out what works for your physically and mentally. Forget to accommodate the mental side and its easy to lapse
And one of the dirty tricks our brains play on us is, a quick but short-lived mood bump is more salient than a constant improvement.
FWIW, for my purposes, "sugar" maybe has more to do with the blood sugar spike than chemistry. Mashed potatoes would count, insofar as, at least according to the tables I've seen, mashed potatoes have just about the highest glycemic index money can buy.
Addiction is often defined [in scientific literature] as having two core elements: Reward and reinforcement (i.e. likelihood to seek repeated exposure).
Addiction in general is a sliding scale. With anything offering both reward and reinforcement being a potential candidate for addiction.
We need protein nutritionally but both the reward and reinforcement are lower than sugar. So if you wish to call protein addictive, you may be able to, but I'd still suggest it is further along the sliding scale towards the "less addictive" side.
Plus if we measure addiction purely by its negative impact on society, sugar addiction claims thousands of lives every year. I don't know how many (if any) lives are claimed by protein addiction.
It's really changed my perspective of sugar.
https://health.usnews.com/wellness/food/articles/2018-11-16/...
A news article in "US News" that cites three people isn't a "scientific consensus." In fact the article itself reference enough contradictory research to show that it couldn't be a consensus (the only "consensus" right now is that there is no consensus and it depends which measure you use to define it).
Plus their entire position boils down to this:
> The research shows, among other key differences, that while similar neuropathways are involved in both drug and sugar consumption, the brain changes that lead to needing more and more cocaine to get the same high aren't seen with sugar.
They're conflating addiction (i.e. habit forming behaviour) with something completely unrelated (biological diminishing returns for addictive substances). According to that definition very few things are actually addictive (which is the crux of this article).
Both the DSM and ICD have a ton of stuff in them that wouldn't fit that tiny definition: Gambling addiction, food addiction, sexual addiction, video game addiction, etc. In fact the majority of the listed addictions aren't according to this article and these researchers.
Second, there seems to be more subtlety to it than could ever be resolved by arguing semantics over vernacular terminology. For example, consider this angle: https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/52/14/910
Study your own family and friends, and you will find a dozen different mechanisms people use.
The key is to be aware that there are multiple paths.
Around a few years ago I started noticing more and more reports on how excess dietary sugar is quite bad for you. So I took a good look at my diet and realized that not only was I eating crap but also over eating in general. I then made it a mission to cut out added sugar, excess carbs, and excess fats. No keto, no atkins, no gym membership, no gimmicks. Just thought to myself "if this was 100+ years ago, what would I be eating?" I limited myself to eating just the basics in smaller portions. I limited beer and red meat to occasion and eliminated sweets, sweet beverages, sweet and savory dishes, and cheese. After a year and a half of discipline I lost damn near 65 lbs. It wasn't easy but it worked. (ymmv, I think my metabolism is quite good and I just abused it)
Conclusion? I feel great. I feel lighter. I move better. Clothes fit better. And I sleep better. I feel confident. I'm now the skinny guy in the group. Family and friends are both envious and inspired to also lose weight. Those feeling alone are addictive so it helps me hold the course.
This doesn't sound right. No wonder you get fed up with such a diet and run back to junk, there is a mental/emotional factor to changing diet, as you describe.
I can't claim I know what would be perfect fit for you, but I can try: you describe tasty junkfood as the thing that makes you happy. Ever tried to properly spice up those healthy meals? I don't mean just chili, but dozens of herbs and spices available from all around the world.
Personal anecdote : When I went backpacking to India for few months, I practically stopped eating meat altogether - their chicken was full of bones, mutton was like a chewing gum, fish curries full of bones and god knows what sanitary conditions were (not) upheld. The thing is, I didn't miss meat at all, food was spiced so well and flavors were so rich that it took me quite some time after coming back to start eating meat (and I never really resumed pork and beef apart from few special occasions).
Also, don't know how active you are, but finding what makes you tick and enjoying the efforts will help greatly with move to healthier eating (it did for me). If you work out enough and often (this takes time to get to, but totally achievable for anybody), you don't have to watch portions and count calories anymore. The key is consistency.
The problem I have when people argue against "processed" foods is that most of thing things that people argue as "processing" is just normal cooking and preserving made to sound scary.
And the research is there that we absorb calories and nutrients differently depending on how and how much we cook things but that should be the discussion.
I don’t recommend this diet to other people though because the first three weeks or so of this detoxing diet is really rough. It was like my body was fightly back, pissed off at me.
Then, when I came through the other side, my levels of inflammation were drastically reduced, I was sleeping great, and my mood and energy level were great! I felt twenty years younger.
However, the first three weeks or so of getting used to the diet were awful which is why I hesitate to recommend it to other people.
EDIT: by processed foods, I am referring to packaged foods, not how they are cooked.
Steak has significantly more available nutrients and calories if you cook it well done. I don't want to live in a world where we define food only on that axis.
You're absolutely right that the actual nutritional content matters and there's a lot of low-nutrition food out there but the term processed just irks me because it doesn't at all capture what's actually wrong with certain types of food.
Processed food, as explained, would be the industrial processing of bleaching the flour etc.
Also the seed oils which are used is highly processed.
Yes you can make a non processed pizza. Use real ingredients.
Yes the term processed is irksome, so use real food. Real food is easy to identify. It's food we good eat and make easily before the industrial age.
What makes a real food if it's not defined by processing? Minimal ingredients list? Marshmallow is just sugar, water and gelatin. The only way you could then consider that "not real food" is by appealing to the processing of the sugar again.
The recent red meat study was a very rigorous one (as they knew people would try unpick it).
The older I get, the more I appreciate eating healthy. But every once in a while I'll order dominos and enjoy it without guilt.
Those are the circumstances under which I learned to cook: garlic, vinegar, searing heat, beans, and eggs can combine to make the chicken and vegetables unrecognizable. And still healthy.
This article has a good summary: https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/diagnosis-diet/20190...
Excess heme iron on red meat is harder for the body to regulate absorptions and is linked to cancer.
In general, there are no nutrients in meat that don't exist in an equivalent or better form in plants, that's where they come from after all.
Including ALA, DHA (flax seeds for example), and many of the nutrients are made by the body itself. We are animals too, our body has all the same essential mechanisms to process plant foods as animals do.
Of course, we can't eat grass like a cow, but fruits, vegetables, root vegetables, nuts and seeds all that we can digest easily.
One can live on pure animal product alone and not need any supplements, yet one can't do the reverse. If you eat only plant food you must consume supplements.
There are plenty of nutrients found in meat and not found in plants.
B12 is the big supplement not found in plant foods, and the supplement was invented in 60s. So no true vegans could exist until then. Vegetarians existed, but they ate some animal products.
Plants also have no Vitamin A, only carotenoids which is difficult for our bodies to convert to Vitamin A.
The vitamin D found in plants is inferior to the vitamin D in meat. Most of us don't get enough sun for adequate vitamin D.
Vitamin K2 is also severely lacking in plants.
Heme iron is also only found in animal products. You need heme iron. For most people iron overload is not a worry, you need some genetic disposition to absorb extra iron.
We can't eat grass like a cow, but we can eat that cow.
You've made some claims without an examples. Can you give me an example of nutrients that are found in plants and not in animals?
Also the definition of an "essential nutrient" is a nutrient that we can't synthesise ourselves in our bodies. So no we can't make any essential nutrient because that's the very definition of the phrase.
> You need heme iron.
You don't have to eat the cow, but it would be a waste to give it to the dogs when it dies. And you would thrive more if you did eat it.
I have always hated the taste of meat. My pet theory is that some bodies simply can't handle it.
If you live on only animal products you are likely to get diseases like scurvy, or like the Inuit have a rampant rate of atherosclerosis.
B12 is produced by bacteria in the dust, meat in modern factory farms only has it because it gets injected in the animals.
Living in nature drinking from spring water and not washing everything so throughly we would get all the B12 we need. Instead of injecting the supplement in the cow and eating it, just take it straight.
> There are plenty of nutrients found in meat and not found in plants
Literally all nutrients in meat come from plants, or can be made by our body based on plants, there are no magical nutrients in meat it's myth.
> They are also in a less bioavailable form,
Certain nutrients like iron are excessively concentrated in meat, and eating it every day 3 times a day is toxic, so having less of it per volume is a good thing not a bad thing.
All the vitamins that you need are available in plants, A, K2, you name it. There is no magical nutrient missing they all come from plants.
As you mentioned, your body also produces vitamin D, you can go outside which is healthy anyway and that's it. Your body produces Vitamin D just like the animals.
Our body can either consume directly or produce based on plants anything that it needs in sufficient amount.
There is nothing magical about meat, its completely optional for a healthy human diet in all stages of life - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19562864
B12 only comes with veggies if you don't clean them, i.e., if you risk food borne diseases. Otherwise you need supplements.
Meat is optional if you eat enough unwashed veggies. Veggies are optional if you eat enough meat. Societies have survived for centuries with both diets, but the thriving societies were all omnivorous.
Most Americans don't think they eat organs, but they are a big component of most processed meat foods, like sausages. But offal consumption is prevalent in the rest of the world. Even in the US, you can find offal in many Mexican restaurants.
https://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/news/20001025/too-much-i...
There are certain amino acids the body can't make itself, meat and fish contain those in high levels getting them from plants is of course possible but a pure plant only diet without dairy and fish you have to be careful that you are eating the right mix to get all the amino acids.
This is a common myth, plants contain all the essential amino acids. A cows gut does not magically create essential amino acids, it takes them from plants, and so can we.
There is no magical ingredient in animal products, they are completely optional for a healthy diet.
Meat and eggs are complete proteins in and of themselves, as a single source they are complete in all the essential amino acids, plants aren’t so you have to be more careful to get a decent mix.
I’ve no dog in this fight, I’m not a vegan or vegetarian but I also eat very little meat for medical reasons so I made sure I ate an increased range of plants to compensate.
And comparing nutrients, animal products have far more, in better format, and more available then vegetables. For example liver is about 20 times more nutritious than fruit by weight.
Plants, have hundreds of active compounds in them that meat products do not. Those more bioavailable micronutrients from meat are linked to problems and cancers (heme iron) because our body can't regulate them as well as from plant sources.
Now I am not saying that liver is not packed with micronutrients, but I am just replying to a hilarious claims that plants are somehow drasticaly lacking in nutrients
Second, I would like to ban the phrase "eat healthy" from the popular consciousness. It's nonsense. You can't eat healthy. You can be healthy, and you can eat healthy foods. What are healthy foods? Foods that have calories and won't poison you. That's a big category.
When I think of "healthy" veggies and chicken, I think of a pot with raw veggies and chicken breast steamed until they're cooked, with a bit of salt and pepper. Incredibly unappetizing, very bland. I don't care how fat I am, I would never waste my time or money eating something like that. I'd rather eat a candy bar, which would be about the same calories.
Your weight is defined by the number of calories you consume and burn. If you eat 1200 calories of veggies and chicken, your weight goes up. If you eat 500 calories of olive oil, garlic, onions, tomatoes, basil, oregano, sweet potato, hot sauce, and lemon-garlic-yogurt marinated chicken in a toasted pita, your weight goes up less. The latter tastes a hell of a lot better than the former, and you didn't gain weight. But it has oil and yogurt and bread, so some people don't consider it "healthy".
It is definitely hard to begin eating smaller portions, but I guarantee that if you improve the flavor of your foods, choose a variety of recipes, and keep the overall calories down, you can eat delicious, satisfying meals and lose weight. I also highly recommend cold-brewed drinks over soda, which you can carbonate yourself. I make overnight cold brewed tea and coffee, veggie-flavored waters, and fresh juices.
This is orthogonal to the fact that sugar makes me sleepy overall.
He needs to learn to cook more things.
I can't eat an entire pizza in one sitting and a single big meal usually means I won't eat for the next 18 hours, so what I usually do is have small portions of fatty/caloric food. A single cheeseburger or pizza slice. Half a cookie. Ice cream, but the smallest serving. Those feel much better than a pound of chicken, and as an added bonus, I'm not feeling nauseous at the end of the meal.
but, in the long term, it's worth it to eat healthy.
> A pizza and a soda, or a huge steak and garlic mashed potatoes will lift my mood quickly.
When I eat processed/junk food, the temporary high is very soon replaced by feelings of low energy, moodiness, acid reflux, and general sluggishness.
When I eat a veggie-dominant meal (raw garlic-tahini sauce over roasted broccoli/kale with a side of buckwheat noodles and hemp seed, for example) I feel vibrant and happy and productive for hours.
Tip for OP: when eating veggie meals, make sure to add vegetable fats for more calories.
After only a month of no added sugar (not keto or atkins or similar as I like beans, good bread, oats, vegetables, but other than that no sugar added) when going for a lunch with a friend we shared a Coke, just a 330ml tin, between two. The lunch was nice, stewed chicken, mushrooms, broccoli, good conversation. When stepping outside, it felt like I'd had a full bottle of wine, just from that little amount of Coke.
I got off the subway early and walked the next few stops to walk off the Coke.
I take an annual medical and fortunately have no diabetes or anything similar, BMI22.X. My body, brain, simply had become unaccustomed to refined sugars, or was becoming re-accustomed very quickly for the other side of the kettle.
It was an eye opening experience.
*Extreme fatigue, sometimes persisting through 12 hours of sleep.
Can't speculate as to where the benefit is coming from (IF or maybe I was previously eating something I'm sensitive to?) but clearly something is working.
For myself, intermittent fasting meant it was easier for me to maintain weight rather than gaining, largely because I removed a 400 calorie meal, a 150 calorie morning snack, and a 9PM bedtime snack from my diet.
However, when I changed diets completely for a month during a Whole30, I dropped quite a few pounds and felt much better as far as mental clarity and energy levels.
(Unfortunately I have not maintained that healthier diet, but plan to attempt it again!)
Changed it. Currently eating a small subset of foods that I'm likely not sensitive to (chicken, rice, mushroom, various veg, blueberries, figs). That seems balanced enough that I can probably safely sustain it for a while. Googling kicked up a bunch of directly contradictory info on what helps w/ inflammation so I'm just winging it.
But at about 700/2000 calorie intake. All 700 at night, so fasting 23 hrs per day basically while running a crazy high deficit. Surprised how normal/better I feel with that crazy schedule.
But I find FODMAPs and Whole 30 to be useful starting places. Glad you found a collection of foods that work for you. (And I love mushrooms, blueberries and figs!)
e.g. FODMAPs says definitely no garlic. While a Harvard "endorsed" anti-inflammation diet said eat lots of garlic.
Beans, lentils etc...it's all over the place depending on whom you listen to. :(
I'll have a look at Whole30 - never heard of it. Also seeing lots of chat about "Dr. Greger's Daily Dozen" on /r/plantbaseddiet
>Glad you found a collection of foods that work for you.
So far so good. :)
So if you enroll subjects in a study, give them attention, free food, gift card, phone calls, etc. then after three weeks they will feel less depressed than a group of subjects for which nothing was done.
It would be more convincing if they had a third group that they fed blue cheese bacon cheeseburgers, french fries, diet Coke and Lil Debbie cakes from a convenience store. I'd bet even money that the third group would have been less depressed too.
Though I agree with you, sounds suspiciously like the group who was depressed became less depressed as they felt someone cared about them.
You can eat junk food filled with carbs (Standard white bread, pure pasta, white rice), likewise junk food full of fats. (Most milk products, highly processed meat.)
The main problem is when the diet is either lacking in things we do not completely understand (vitamins, micronutrients, perhaps phytonutrients) or is effective caloric surplus - that is, you gain weight.
Considering food x as carbs or y as fats or z as protein is reductive to the extreme not warranted by current state of knowledge and leads to milk powder and mashed potato diet. ;)
The basic nutrients do not have a quality other than perhaps the ease with which they're absorbed, which early matters for even somewhat unhealthy person, only perhaps for really sick people.
Our knowledge of more than coarse grained dietary needs and effects is grossly overestimated. That vacuum is exploited by commercial interests that typically vilify any form of consumption moderation, and focus instead on promoting one (over)consumption pattern over another.
"Eat lots of different things in moderation because honestly we do not know in enough detail what we need" is sound advice, but sadly just benefits the "patient" and not some profit maximizing economic lobby group.
As for other meats and dairy(which is just milk), most serious nutritional researchers will tell you to limit those if not nearly eliminate them from your diet. The media is constantly showing pro-meat stuff because the meat and dairy industry keeps funding pro meat research. It's especially confusing because even some of the largest companies/organization like the AHA and American cancer society is taking money from big meat and big dairy and funding pro dairy/meat research.
A McDonald's hamburger is a good example of "meat" that would be good to limit.
I think the point is the "state of mind" is a product of everything else going on in the body. It will be infinitely more difficult to have a positive state of mind while your body is contending with chronic inflammation and your unhealthy gut isn't producing serotonin. Your right 3 weeks isn't enough, but biomarkers can be dramatically improved in 3 weeks with change of diet, especially with respect to chronic inflammation.
They don't seem to have done the 3-month follow up with the control group.
Most importantly it is not a cross design, and even that would need in excess of hundred patients to be meaningful. As is they can be measuring the effect of attention and any kind of change on depression, given some genetic, phenotypical or environmental susceptibilities incidentally found in their treatment group.
Meaning the conclusion is not possible to generalize.
These tiny studies, especially of low quality and poor design are an annoying waste of time and money.
Not sure if a junk food diet would fly, but they could have at least given both groups a gift card and some gifts (maybe the control could have received non-food items of equal value?) and had the same phone calls, but with some "neutral" questions in the no diet change group.
There are plenty of studies that do behavioral controls. Not sure why they didn't do it in this one. Especially when there's a large literature on waitlisting effects on depression (basically people who are waitlisted as opposed to assigned to a behavioral control tend to have the worst outcomes).
Maybe, but certainly their biomarkers would continue to show chronic (dietary) inflammation and otherwise they would have no improvement in seratonin production in the gut.
Please support this point by citing or conducting studies of good quality showing causation of these markers on mortality and morbidity endpoints, instead of supposition that it is true.
This is very hard to actually show, by the way.
- less than five years old, or
- from Americans
While I might reject some false positives, these rules are easy to implement and improve the signal to noise ratio tremendously.
But I'm hoping that the unique pressure we have placed on ourselves eventually leads us to develop diet solutions that help the whole world.
But as test subjects in an extreme obesity study, the rest of the world is probably wise to avoid American "solutions" to problems they might not even have yet. For example Butter Coffee is a huge improvement for some people here, because it is better than eating a bowl of sugar cereal or having donuts and a Frappacino. But is the Butter Coffee better than a typical Italian breakfast of "Espresso and maybe a small yogurt"?
I think you actually have the kernel of a good heuristic there, but I'd, uh, refine it a bit.
Also interesting to think about how you would possibly conduct a blind study for diet.
Anecdotally, taking deliberate control of my meal habits (and sticking to them even when my appetite goes nuts) really helps episodes go easier.
I suspect what's happening here is that these people are eating more veggies and nuts and whole grains thus getting more magnesium in their diet.
I guess at least for me a calorie deficit is really depressing.
Also days I ate strawberries were also correlated. Go figure.
"The five classical signs of inflammation are heat, pain, redness, swelling, and loss of function" -- surely you don't have these when you eat processed food.
Dietarily, they're referring more to chronic inflammation, there's info about it here under "chronic inflammation":
From what I gathered, preparing and eating colorful, pungent food constitutes a large part of enjoyment in the meal, which helps curb hunger and sparks joie de vivre. It's no coincidence that we call "fast food" that way; it's meant to leave us unsatiated and craving for more.
I started off trying Keto, but found it very hard to maintain. Now, I simply skip the high carb portions of my meals. Skip potatoes, skip rice, avoid pasta (although black bean pasta is a very good stand in). If I'm craving fast food (damn you Chick-fil-a), simply skipping the fries makes a night and day difference about how terrible I'll feel later in the day.
Eat any seasoned fruit, at will
I am aware that doing anything at all seems very hard when you are depressed but once you start it and see how helpful it is, it gives you even more ambition to continue
FB targeting algorithm is only accurate if they think I like ramen :)