HEALTHY DIET -- HEALTHY MIND
HEALTHY DIET -- HEALTHY MIND
In the early 1970s, Rachel Carson wrote the classic Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin) in which she called for accountability from industrial polluters. Many have since been forced to clean up and undo the damage they've done. They've been held accountable, and rightly so. Similarly, there are those who believe that the food industry is polluting our bodies and needs to be held accountable. I have written before about the connection between processed foods and obesity. But there's another aspect -- the food/behavior connection.
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Carol Simontacchi, MS, CCN, author of The Crazy Makers (Penguin Group), says it isn't just a coincidence that use of antidepressants and medications for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are on the rise as the quality of the American diet has declined.
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To find out more information, I spoke with Simontacchi. A relentless critic of the "food industry," she is not optimistic about what today's kids -- and adults -- are eating.
YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT
We've heard it before. You are what you eat. And, in particular, Simontacchi is concerned that not enough attention is being paid to the connection between our diets and our brains. The implications are enormous, influencing everything from behavior disturbances in childhood to memory loss and cognitive decline in old age. "The food industry has altered our consumption of basic nutrients so our brains are deprived of the essential building blocks required for them to function optimally," she explained. "Our food is literally making us crazy."
RESEARCH FOR THE CRAZY MAKERS
As part of the research for her book, The Crazy Makers, Simontacchi conducted a study on the influence of diet on cognition and mood. She gave a test group of typical high school students -- who had been either skipping breakfast or grabbing a donut or some other carbohydrate-filled nutritionally devoid food -- a breakfast shake of protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals and omega-3 fatty acids. She did a before-and-after comparison of their results on a standardized mood test (Profile of Mood States, or POMS), which measures, among other things, tension, anger, depression, hostility, fatigue and confusion. "The results were so good, we had to rerun the statistics to verify the findings," Simontacchi told me. "The drink made a significant difference in how these teenagers felt emotionally." Since low levels of certain amino acids and essential fats have been frequently shown in both animal and human studies to be associated with aggression, hostility and other behavior problems, the results were not surprising to her.
THE BIG 3
According to Simontacchi, there are three major culprits that are creating the problem -- sugar, sodium/salt and food additives.
* Sugar. "The typical American consumes 90 kilograms of sugar and artificial sweeteners a year," she told me. "Sugar is an anti-nutrient. That means your body has to use up precious resources just to handle it. For someone deficient in zinc, or in the B vitamins, that's a huge problem. And when you sit down and have a breakfast cereal that has more sugar in it than Coca Cola, your blood sugar goes through the roof. Ultimately that leads to high insulin -- a risk factor for diabetes and metabolic syndrome -- and then to high cortisol, a hormone that has been shown to shrink the hypothalamus of the brain."
* Sodium. "We don't commonly think about sodium," Simontacchi explained, "but kids typically consume huge amounts. Nearly all processed foods and snack foods have high sodium content and little potassium. Salty foods make you want more of them and set up a cycle of cravings." According to Simontacchi, sodium is our new "drug of choice." "When you have constant intake of sodium and very little potassium to help the sodium stay in balance, as is typical in the American diet, it causes anxiety, confusion, irritability, crankiness and confusion... just what I see in kids after a typical lunch that contains about 1,500 mg of sodium, no potassium and plenty of sugar."
* Aspartame and other food additives. Finally, there are food additives. Asked to name a particularly bad one, she quickly named aspartame, the artificial sweetener known as NutraSweet. "There's not a lot of science to back this up," she pointed out carefully, "but here's what we do know. Aspartame is an excitotoxin -- that means it works on the brain. It breaks down to, among other things, methanol, which is basically wood alcohol. And, there are more complaints to the U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) about aspartame than any other substance on the American market. Many of those complaints involve headaches, and some involve epilepsy. I think the neurological implications of these chemicals is a whole area that needs to be explored in much greater depth."
"As far as the other chemical food additives, such as flavorings, colorings and preservatives, for example, no one is really studying them for their effects on behavior," she added. "Sure, they've been 'found to be safe' in that they do not directly cause cancer -- but what about the brain? It just makes sense that there might be neurological implications of using food additives, especially in the quantities in which we typically consume them."
Although testing of the effects of food additives on the liver, brain, kidneys, blood-forming organs and reproductive system is required under the Color Additive Amendment of 1960, it is impossible to test every additive, every pesticide, every herbicide or every other chemical in the environment. It is even more impossible to test the combined effects of these chemicals. And some chemicals -- such as pesticide chemicals on agricultural products -- are excluded from the definition of an additive. "Pesticides disrupt the endocrine and reproductive systems of insects," said Simontacchi. "It stands to reason that they could be having serious effects on our own systems, even if the science hasn't fully demonstrated them yet."
The worst offenders in most American diets today, according to Simontacchi, are...
1. Breakfast cereals (they have a high sugar content).
2. "Lunchables" (they contain 40 to 60 g of sugar and more than 750 mg of sodium).
3. Soft drinks (high sugar and chemicals).
4. Snack foods such as potato chips (high sodium).
5. Ice cream.
6. Juice drinks.
For more on the food-mood connection, read on below...
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HEALTHY DIET -- HEALTHY MIND CONTINUED
IS DEPRESSION FOOD RELATED?
"When an adolescent's nutritionally challenged diet has deprived his brain of the molecules needed to make calming, soothing neurotransmitters, and he feels overwhelmed with negative feelings, he lashes out in anger. He drinks more soft drinks and eats more junk food and this temporarily makes him feel better but escalates the bad mood. Junk food (high-carb, high-sugar, high-fat, high-salt products) may be a form of self-medication. Some of the self-destructive behavior we see in teenagers may well be the result of depression they have no resources to resolve." Simontacchi explained that it would not be correct to say that depression is completely caused by diet, but poor nutrition can trigger it in susceptible people who start out at a biochemical or nutritional deficit. "It is then a double whammy when the body is harmed by the sugar and salt and simultaneously deprived of quality nutrition it needs to function at its best."
Adults pay the price for a diet heavy in processed foods as well. The cognitive decline often seen in aging -- from "senior moments" to vascular dementia -- is often accompanied by serious nutrient deficiencies. "Cognitive decline actually mimics deficiencies of folic acid and vitamin B-12," she told me, "and B-12 is a particularly difficult nutrient for older people to absorb well."
WHAT YOU CAN DO
"It's really not complicated at all," Simontacchi told me. "We need to go back to consuming real food. If it didn't grow in a garden, or if God didn't make it, stay away."
"Older people are eating more pre-packaged entrees, and that's a big mistake," she said. "They're basically stripped of nutrition and high in salt and unhealthful fats. Adults need to stop concentrating on just convenience and begin thinking about the basics -- feeding your brain." There's plenty of good-tasting and easy-to-make food available at the supermarket. Her favorites include...
* Roasted chickens
* Packaged salads
* Humus
* Raw nuts and seeds
* Fresh, hearty soups (Note: Watch the sodium levels.)
By eating more healthfully, you'll have more energy and brain cells available to be creative in your food preparation.
Be well,
Carole Jackson
Bottom Line's Daily Health News
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How the FDA is playing "hired gun" for the drug biz...
...by banning this natural cholesterol-lowering secret that's better than statin drugs.
Drug giants knew they'd be in trouble if word got out about red yeast rice...
Not only did studies show that this ancient Asian edible slashed cholesterol an average of 40 points in just 3 months, it did so without any side effects whatsoever. What's more, it was growing more and more widely available, for far less money than statin drugs -- and without the need for a prescription...
So what did those fat-cat drug executives do? They went to court...
Keep reading...
http://www1.youreletters.com/t/367259/6833490/787037/0/
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Sources:
Healthy Diet -- Healthy Mind
Carol Simontacchi, MS, certified clinical nutritionist and author of The Crazy Makers: How the Food Industry Is Destroying Our Brains and Harming Our Children (Penguin Group), as well as several other best-selling books on nutrition and health. She can be found at flywithwings.com.
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