Unprocessed: How the Food We Eat Is Fuelling Our Mental Health Crisis

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Yeah, and I want to test something out on you, this feeling I have right now. I’m also, in my work, really interested in how what goes on inside us reflects outside us — reflects in our presence in the world, reflects on our life together. And I feel like you could look at so many things that are happening in the world that we have many ways to analyze and say that our individual nervous systems and our collective nervous system, that these things are in massive distress and that we are in a civilizational fight-flight-freeze moment. So I don’t know. I test that out on you. So bringing this all together, yes, we have at least a compelling case for more research, but certainly for greater understanding of what’s happening, in relation to the role of food and nutrition in our brain and mood health.

Unprocessed is a book on nutrition, like many others before it. What sets this one apart though is an (at times unbalanced) focus on diet during pregnancy, reducing violence in prisons through supplementation, or giving out correct dietary guidelines from the - in this case UK - government.Kimberley said she believed the response was "partly" framed by the way in which different aspects of participants' characters were portrayed in the show. And they aren’t just kind of squatters; [ laughs] they haven’t just moved in. They do earn their keep, and they earn their keep, really, in this quite beautiful, symbiotic relationship, which is they are able to digest and make good use of parts of our diets that we can’t digest. So, largely fiber and polyphenol compounds that we don’t have the enzymes to digest, they get down into the colon, and the microorganisms can ferment it. And their metabolites provide a whole range of beneficial compounds and activities for our bodies, including the production of vitamins, the synthesis of short-chain fatty acids, the synthesis of neurotransmitters that don’t necessarily cross into the brain but can communicate, we think, with the brain, helping to train our immune systems and keep our immune systems functioning well. All of this is the symbiotic relationship between the microorganisms in our guts, our diets, and our overall health and genetics. In particular, the article surveys the growing body of research suggesting that traditional eating patterns like the Mediterranean diet can help prevent and manage mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety.

Wilson: Sometimes. Yes and no. [ laughs] So last week, I was furiously angry, [ laughs] stomping around London at lunchtime over something that I knew, even at the time, even within the cloud of my rage, was just a minor inconvenience. And I was trying to work it out; I’d managed to hold onto enough of my thinking apparatus to be like, this seems like an outsized response to a minor inconvenience; what’s going on? And I realized it was simply that I was very hungry and that I needed to have some lunch. And then my cortisol dropped, and I felt better. So I still get caught out by this thing.Be honest with me, wherever possible. Being treated like a fool winds me up no end. We’ll get on much better if you’re straight with me. It’s not just that I dislike dishonesty. Honestly? I think it makes you seem weak. Own the truth. Tippett: And again, some of the things that you prescribe for, for example, minimizing stress or working with stress are things that are free: [ laughs] fresh air, natural light, sleep, rituals, the quality of our relationships. You also talk about arguments for limiting exposure to the news, as a therapeutic intervention. And I have to say, I — or, probably, to social media; or, those two things are synonymous, these days. I have to say, one of the most fascinating podcasts I listened to that you did was on dopamine, another neurotransmitter that we — is a word that we toss around. I certainly associate dopamine with that dopamine hit one gets from getting a notification or going online, being on social media. It was absolutely terrifying and illuminating to hear you talk about the importance of dopamine, not as a high, but just as one of the things that helps us decide to get out of bed in the morning, that helps with our overall pleasure in life; and what you explained is that what disrupts dopamine, or what plays with dopamine, actually works to diminish the baseline of that basic energy we have for life.