Diet and depression: what you eat impacts your mood

Though some posters above have some understandable concerns with the protocol of this specific study, hopefully no-one is challenging the link between diet / nutrition and the brain?

Here are a host of links to other studies:

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A good pasta dish always cheers me up.

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Here’s another study that also finds this effect for the Mediterranean diet: https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-017-0791-y

Search for the SMILES acronym for related articles. The Mediterranean diet is also the most research supported diet for weight loss / improved health purposes. Olive oil seems to be a particularly important part of it.

Anecdata, but the healthier my diet has become the worse my overall mood got. The two are probably not related, really - my mood is affected by problems at work (specifically stress aggravated by constant conflicts with a coworker, and our supervisor’s complete inability and unwillingness to do anything about it), financial, political and social instability, lack of sleep, etc.

That said, I used to hate cooking and think it was a waste of time, now it’s something I incorporated into my life and find myself enjoying. It has a positive effect on me, but it’s not really the food itself - it’s the process of cooking, the way I find myself improving, and the sense of success I feel when I make something tasty on my own.

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Socca (in French) or Farinata (in Italian) is great too!

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Almost any kind of INTENTIONALITY in eating will be better than eating “whatever I’m hungry for” in the moment. Caloric restriction (“eat less”) tends not to work long term. Restricting the kinds of food one eats tends to give better results long term, regardless of the specific foods one chooses to eliminate. Self-imposed rules for eating tend to reduce appetite and improve health overall.

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Sorry to hear about your work shit. Hope you’ll get it sorted soon.

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Thanks, I really hope so too…

Near the tail-end of Shackelton’s Trans-Antarctic Expedition, a split-off ill-fed group on Elephant Island ‘kept their chins up’ by talking about their favorite foods (which actually helped, given their meager and dwindling seal/penguin food supply).

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