MOOD FOOD: TREATING MENTAL HEALTH WITH DIET - Felice Jacka PhD #70

How much can a change in diet influence symptoms of mental health disorders? Why are a diversity of plants and whole foods so important to include, and ultra processed foods so important to remove? Why are inflammation and microbe diversity in the gut so key to this question? What does this research mean for the life-style medicine movement and to world food policy?

In this episode we have the exploding new field of nutritional psychiatry to get to grips with, that is the way our diet can influence and even treat mental health conditions. We’re going to be discussing the historical separation of mind and body by science, which has led to scepticism that diet could influence mental health outcomes; the new understanding of the importance of diversity in our microbiome and inflammation to our mood and mental state; our main topic which is going to be the radical results of recent trials showing large changes in cognitive and mental health outcomes when diet is altered; we’ll get into the foods that can bring about that change and why they work; and we’re going to be getting into the reasons for the broken industrialised food environment that has contributed to the current mental health epidemic in the west.

Fortunately, to understand this complex new field, our guest today is the very scientist that risked her reputation to conduct the first trials, facing considerable pushback, only to shift the consensus remarkably quickly with some top science, Felice Jacka. She is the Deakin University Distinguished Professor of Nutritional Psychiatry in Melbourne, the founder and director of the Food & Mood Centre, and of the International Society of Nutritional Psychiatry; She has been cited in over 100 institutional directives for food policy including the World Health Organization and UNICEF; and she is also the author of two books on this for the general public, the children’s book “There’s a Zoo in my Poo” and for adults “Brain Changer: How diet can save your mental health” which we’ll be covering today. Her impact has been so high on public health that in 2021 she was awarded the Order of Australia for her services to nutritional psychiatry.

What we discuss:

00:00 Intro

08:50 The historic separation between mental and physical health.

10:35 People with mental health die about 20 years earlier.

13:30 The connection between the immune system and mental health.

16:20 New microbiome & chronic inflammation research’s influence on psychiatry.

20:00 Epigenetics, mitochondria (energy generation) & neurotransmitter influences.

21:15 Gut brain axis & oxidative stress response.

33:30 The SMILES trial results and their integration into the consensus.

38:30 Using the Press to shorten the usual 20 year gap between results and policy change.

43:00 Industrialised food is the leading cause of chronic disease & biodiversity loss.

45:00 ‘We’re not going to tell people what to eat’: the food lobby’s ‘nanny state’ argument.

50:00 Soil depletion and the soil microbiome.

50:50 The life-style psychiatry movement: Diet, sleep and exercise.

01:05:30 Take out ultra-processed foods - even the nutritionally balanced ones.

01:12:30 Cognitive ability and memory reduced by processed foods.

01:14:45 Nutritional and energetic equivalent foods have totally different outcomes for the microbiome.

01:19:15 Put in a variety of plants - 30 a week.

01:20:20 The mediterranean diet. 01:24:50 Polyphenol science so far.

01:27:00 Emulsifiers and artificial sugars - the mucosal lining of the gut.

01:30:15 Fermented foods - the waste products of the bacteria are beneficial.

References:

Felice Jacka, “Brain Changer: The Good Mental Health Diet”

Felice Jacka, “There’s a Zoo in my Poo”

Melissa Lane et al, ‘Ultra‐Processed Food Consumption and Mental Health: A Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis of Observational Studies’ paper

Felice Jacka’ et al, ‘A randomised controlled trial of dietary improvement for adults with major depression (the 'SMILES' trial)’ Paper