Although I’ve written and rewritten an appropriate first sentence for this blog several times now, I cannot get past some version of, “You guys! You gotta read this book!” I like to talk, and I like to write, so if I am struggling to find the superlative words to express how important a book is, you know something monumental is afoot.

Truly, I wish I could persuade everyone I know to read or listen to Harvard-trained psychiatrist Dr. Georgia Ede’s new book, Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind: A Powerful Plan to Improve Mood, Overcome Anxiety, and Protect Memory for a Lifetime of Optimal Mental Health. It teaches that nutrition matters when it comes to brain health, and that changing one’s diet can dramatically improve one’s mental health.  Dr. Ede doesn’t simply assert that one must give up the Standard American Diet of ultra-processed foods in order to attain better mental well-being, she explains the hows and whys in ways that are interesting and easy to understand.

Practically every chapter had new information for me, but here are a few points that were particularly striking:

Most of us are aware that nutritional information available to the lay person is often confusing and contradictory. Dr. Ede explains that this is because too many nutrition studies are based on survey information—asking a person how many servings of broccoli they ate in the past month, for example. They are notoriously unreliable, but they are simple to conduct. Better-constructed studies still have methodological flaws. For example, testing whole-wheat flour against white flour instead of testing whole-wheat flour against no wheat at all leads to different results on the value of whole-wheat flour.

What this means is that when one removes epidemiological studies (the survey type) and biased or poorly constructed studies from the literature, there is no contradiction in what the optimal human diet should be. Many popular dietary approaches simply are not evidence-based and rely instead on emotions and popularity. Learning this was definitely a light-bulb moment for me. I’ve always wondered why there is so much noise, so much emotion and political posturing, and not enough factual information when it comes to nutrition.

There is also a growing understanding of what a healthy diet should not be, and a healthy diet should not be heavy on sugars that help create insulin resistance in the body. Dr. Ede explains that so many mental health issues are the result of insulin resistance in the brain and body.  In fact, the concept that reversing insulin resistance can result in improved mental, not just physical, health is the key idea in her book. If you take nothing else away from this blog post or her book, hold on to the idea that reversing insulin resistance and becoming metabolically healthy (only 10% of us are metabolically healthy) will resolve so many health issues

There is no such thing as superfoods; it is all marketing hype. Common sense tells us this, but again, so many articles suggest that superfoods will save us. Not so, says Dr. Ede. For example, Dr. Ede indicates that the idea of polyphenols (plant chemicals) and antioxidants aren’t scientifically solid as a way of improving human health. Blueberries may be delicious, for example, but there are no good studies that show them to be super or exceptionally beneficial in any way. In fact, Dr. Ede points out that the USDA quietly debunked the idea that antioxidants are important to human health back in 2012.

Another non-superfood example she provides is the story of and controversy around red wine. Dr. Ede notes that the antioxidant resveratrol slows skin cancers in mice, but in human studies did nothing to help people with mild to moderate dementia. And, those studies about the benefits of red wine? Well, humans would need to drink 500 bottles of wine to get the lowest dosage used in any of the mice studies.

I could go on and on with fascinating bits of information, but the bottom line is that Dr. Ede shows us that eating real, mildly processed food (chopped, cooked, pressed) is the way to go. Seriously, if you want to know how to lessen anxiety or depression, or to minimize symptoms of more serious mental illness, read or listen to what Dr. Ede has to say on the subject.

P.S. If you really want to dive deep, another Harvard-trained psychiatrist, Dr. Chris Palmer, has also written on the subject of food and mental health. You can learn more about his book, Brain Energy, here: https://brainshapeva.com/brain-energy/