food and mood

Analyze food labels to swing the food and mood connection in your favor. The shorter the ingredients list, the healthier the food is likely to be.

Bad mood food: People who eat lots of unhealthy processed food are more likely to develop depression, a study suggests.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—A new study published in The British Journal of Psychiatry makes a strong case that processed junk food can trigger or contribute to depression, while eating whole and healthy food seems protective.

THE DETAILS: British and French epidemiologists analyzed food and mood data from 3,486 men and women (average age 55) in the Whitehall II study on London-based office staff. Each participant answered a food frequency questionnaire in which they were asked how often they had eaten a designated portion size of a food during the previous year (set responses ranged from “never” to “six or more times per day”). That data was then converted to a daily intake and two dietary patterns were identified: the “whole food pattern” (defined by a high daily intake of vegetables, fruits, and fish) and the “processed food pattern” (characterized by high consumption of sweetened desserts, chocolates, fried food, processed meat, pies, refined grains, high-fat dairy products, and condiments). Five years later, all the participants answered a short questionnaire designed to measure symptoms of depression in the general population.

After adjusting for variables such as age and sex, the scientists found that high consumption of processed food was associated with increased likelihood of depression, whereas those who had the highest consumption of whole foods were least likely to be depressed, and even less likely than those in the whole food pattern who ate fewer whole foods.

WHAT IT MEANS: Junk food may taste good, but along with the detrimental effects of all that sugar and fat on your body, eating it makes you feel low, as well. The researchers are pretty confident that they've uncovered a true cause-and-effect relationship. "Our finding shows a strong association between diet and depressive symptoms after controlling for a large range of socio-demographic factors, and for health behaviors such as smoking, physical activity, and health status," notes lead study author Tasnime Akbaraly, PhD, an epidemiologist with the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Montpellier, France. While it’s possible that a healthy diet is a marker of some other factor that protects against depression, "the effect of diet on depressive symptoms didn’t go down after we adjusted for other indicators of a healthy lifestyle, such as smoking, physical activity, and body mass, Akbaraly says. "What we found isn't a spurious association.”

Here's how to eat for optimal mental, as well as physical, health: