Have a Happy Diet

They say, “You are what you eat”, and it is true according to new research that confirms the obvious.

In short, an unhealthy diet leads to unhealthy mind and body, including some mental ills such as depression.

At the top of the list of unhealthy foods are the processed foods.

Processed food has been preserved and most likely have many added ingredients such as sugar, salt, fat, and artificial colours or preservatives. 

While these make food taste better, it can lead to serious health problems such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, weight problems, and others.

Processed food has been cooked and preserved by canning, freezing, packaging, or changed in nutritional composition with preparation in various ways. Food technologists have developed processed foods to be what the human brain considers tasty, in order to encourage consumption and drive $ale$.

Ultra-processed foods are made mostly from substances extracted from foods, such as fats, starches, added sugars, and hydrogenated fats. These foods go through multiple processes (extrusion, molding, milling, etc.). While these make food taste better, it can lead to serious health problems such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, weight problems, and others.

Okay, I admit I just lifted that, word for word from ‘Life Free From Processed Foods”.  But in fairness, I wrote that too.

According to a study by SMILES published in BMC Medicine, (I did not write that study) adult who are experiencing a ‘major depressive disorder’ can change their life for the better by simply changing their diet.

Sure, they could take potentially addictive prescription drugs for the rest of their life, and suffer the side effects – or they could modify their diet.

It is simple when you think about it.

1. Start by cutting out all ultra processed foods from your diet. They are low in daily dietary requirements anyway and on top of that they are expensive.
2. At least limit consumption of other processed foods. Ideally cut them out of your daily diet too.
3. Eat more vegetables in particular. Fresh are best, but snap frozen are good too. Thats because they are frozen within just a few hours of picking. They retain all the natural goodness and flavors.
4. If you can grow your own because then you know your vegetables are free of all the commercial chemicals that farmers may possibly be using. Otherwise, source them from a neighbour who has a glut of vegetables from time to time. You can grow your own and exchange (Barter the old way) vegetables with a neighbour who grows other types of vegetables. Hey, put in a few kitchen herbs too. The fact is growing your own vegetables will help you defeat depression. Yup, it works!
5. Eat more fruit. It takes years to grow fruit trees and they need care to produce healthy disease-free fruit so consider leaving that to the experts. But you might get them from a local farmers market?
6. What are wholegrains? Whole grain is any cereal and pseudocereal that contains an endosperm, germ, and bran. Refined grains, only retain the endosperm. Processed grains such as polished white rice has had all the goodies removed and sold in other products. Choose brown rice which has not been processed.
7. Eat more nuts and seeds. Nuts and seeds are flavorful little packages containing healthy unsaturated fats, vitamins and minerals. It can take many years to grow your own nut tree and different varieties need different climates to grow well and produce – so you will most likely need to buy them. Look for either almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, chestnuts, filberts or hazelnuts, macadamia nuts, pecans, pine nuts, pistachios, walnuts. Have I forgotten any? For sure, there are too man y to list here, so I just mentioned the more common varieties.
8. Vegetables oils. The Mediterranean diet is recognised as one of the healthier diets in the world. It is rich is plant-based cooking oils such as grape seed and olive oils.
9. Throw in garlic and onions and plenty of green vegetables too.
10. Another recognised healthy diet is Japanese. Both diets use fish as a protein base. Apparently cold-water fish as best, if you can get them.
11. Avoid or eliminate red meat such as beef and mutton.
12. When you start sourcing fresh healthy ingrediencies for your meals, and explore healthy recipes. When you start to enjoy cooking your own meals and tasting the results of your own efforts, you will suddenly discover with pleasure that the ‘major depressive disorder’ has disappeared. Gone!
13. The SMILES study reported in the BMC Medicine publication reported around one third of people who changed their diet changed their mind set within 3 months.
15. You can explore all the great information at Internet Hypnosis dot Shop and put it into practice and get life changing results. Thats because there are more secrets to achieving a healthy mind and body which are revealed there.