Cashews have more iron than most other nuts. They are this nice mix of a little bit of protein, some fat and slow burning carbs and fiber. The USDA issued a statement a few years ago about this and also nuts are just naturally satiating. A lot of people are scared of nuts feeling that they’re a high caloric food, but nuts, first of all, have 25% fewer calories than what is listed on the package. It’s really important to start snacking on nuts. So it’s a powerful fat that has lots of good antioxidants in there along with some vitamin E, which is a very important vitamin for brain health. It’s a monounsaturated fat called oleic acid and consumption of oleic acid is correlated with a decreased risk of depression over a 10 year period. Why is that? Because at the core of eating for mental health is eating more plants, more fiber, and a lot of folks struggle with how to do that and oven roasting vegetables or sauteeing vegetables in olive oil is a great way for you to get more of those foods. The next great food for your mental health that you should have in your kitchen and which should be the main fat that you’re cooking with is a good quality olive oil. I’ve got lots of recipes in my cookbooks for smoothies, like in Eat to Beat Depression and Anxiety, which has the peanut buttercup smoothie which is one of my favorites. I have one I like that is made with banana, some kefir and cinnamon. So this is a great way to get a really solid fermented food, a kefir smoothie. Increasingly we know that mental health and gut health are really quite related and to improve our gut health in general, most people want to eat more fermented foods and more plants. Kefir is a fermented dairy product and it has more colony forming units of bacteria than really any other fermented food I’ve been able to find and that’s why I put kefir in my smoothie. Put that over some gnocchi and it’s a great meal. It really ends up not tasting very fishy at all. There’s a great recipe I have called Gnocchi a la Glenda, which is basically some tomato paste, pine nuts, garlic, and sardines. Sardines are a very nutrient dense food but they can be tricky. Also they give you lots of B12, they are a complete protein, and it’s one of the top sources of calcium. I steer my patients towards this source of omega 3 fats, sardines. Omega 3 fats are good for the brain and mental health. So the first food, which can be a challenging one, is sardines. If you’re not getting the right nourishment for your mental health, it’s so much harder to feel your best. Mental health is a lot of work, but nutrition has got to be something you get right. Nutrition is not the only thing you need to take care of for your mental health. I’m one of the leaders in nutritional psychiatry which is the use of food and nutrition to optimize brain health and to treat and prevent mental health disorders. I wanted to go over a few of the foods that I find myself always talking about with patients.
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