This diet will make you happy
Can what we put in our mouths really make a difference to our mental health? AMY PACKER investigates
WHEN Professor Felice Jacka began studying the effects of diet on mental health in 2005, people thought she was, well, mad. “Suggesting that what we eat might influence how we feel was, to many, the domain of hippy-trippy, non-evidence-based belief rather than real medicine,” says the Australian who is now one of the world’s leading researchers in the field of nutritional psychiatry.
“Many seemed to have a disdain for the idea that diet might be of relevance to mental health. Back then there simply wasn’t much in the way of scientific evidence linking food and mood.”
Jacka’s interest in the field had come from personal experience – after developing an anxiety disorder as a child and suffering panic attacks and regular bouts of depression as a teenager growing up in Melbourne, she focused on her exercise, diet and sleep and by her late 20s she had recovered.
Having previously attended art school, Jacka decided to return to university to study psychology, completing a PhD study that made such significant findings it appeared on the cover of The American Journal Of Psychiatry.
Its biggest revelation was that women who consumed diets high in veg, fruit, unprocessed red meat, fish and wholegrain were less likely to suffer with depression or anxiety disorders than their counterparts who ate more typically “western” diets packed with processed food – meat pies, burgers, pizza, chips, white bread and soft drinks.
Perhaps more surprising, however, was it showed that those whose diets revolved around fish, tofu, beans, nuts, yogurt and red wine also experienced more depression.
(Spoiler: it turned out to be due to a lack of red meat. Contrary to her predictions, further research carried out by Jacka revealed that women who ate more red meat were 20-30 per cent less likely to have a history of depressive or anxiety disorder).
“Previously, it had always been assumed vegetarianism arose as a result of the person’s mental health,” says Jacka, who is now director of the Food & Mood Centre led by Deakin University in Australia, and founder and president of the International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research.
“When I investigated,
I saw a very clear relationship between red meat consumption and mental health
– but not in the
direction I expected.” Further research clearly demonstrated that “compared to women consuming the recommended amount of red meat (65-100g three to four times a week), those eating either less or more than that were roughly twice as likely to have a clinical depression or anxiety disorder.”
Since that first research paper, Jacka has gone on to publish more than 150 peer-reviewed scientific papers which have changed popular opinion on the causes of mental ill health. In 2015, she discovered that, in essence, junk food shrinks our brain – or at least the left hippocampus (which, in part, regulates emotion, memory and mental health). “We found that getting not enough of the good stuff and too much of the bad stuff was problematic,” she says.
But it is Jacka’s SMILES study (Supporting the Modification of lifestyle in Lowered Emotional States) that may prove life-changing for anyone with mental health issues.
For the trial, men and women with clinical depression were assigned either a dietary support group or social support.
“The diet was developed using everything we had learnt to date the links between diet, gut health on and mental and brain health and based on both a traditional Mediterranean diet and Australia dietary was guidelines,” says Jacka.
“The team called it the ModiMed diet to signify it was a modified version of a traditional Mediterranean diet. It was specifically designed to be inexpensive and easy to make an follow.”
The plan required eating more fruit, veg, wholegrains, legumes, nuts, low-fat dairy, fish and lean meats while cutting back on processed junk food and alcohol.
The results were astounding. After three months the mental wellbeing of a third of those on the ModiMed diet had improved enough to say their depression had gone into remission, compared to eight per
cent in the second, social support group.
“Simply speaking, the more people improved their diets, the more their depression improved.”
Professor Jacka has now distilled her findings from the last 15 years into a book – Brain Changer: How Diet Can Save Your Mental Health – complete with meal plans and recipes for improved mental wellbeing.
She believes we should consider our food as the basis of our mental and brain health throughout our lives
“While we’ve been told for years that ultra-processed foods that are high in energy and damaging additives and low in fibre and nutrients will mean more illness and early death from chronic diseases, only recently have we understood the implications for our mental health and the health of our brains.”
MORE importantly, unlike many risk factors of mental illness, such as your genes, abuse, significant trauma or physical causes such as head injuries, diet is something we can address ourselves.
“What we put in our mouths really matters, both in the short and long term,” says Jacka.
“Don’t be seduced by the promise of fast, cheap, tasty food.The price you pay really will not be worth it.”
●●Brain Changer by Professor Felice Jacka (£14.99; Hodder & Stoughton)