Nutritional psychiatrist, chef, and author Dr Uma Naidoo explores the connection between gut health and mental health in work and her new book, The Food Mood Connection.
While not entirely new, the concept of food-as-medicine has increasingly gained widespread attention and scrutiny over the past couple of decades. Titles such as 2005’s The China Study by Dr T Colin Campbell, which championed a vegan diet and whole foods as best for optimum health, or Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating, which was also published the same year, became best-sellers; the trend has continued since, largely in response to a world faced with the consequences of a low-nutrition fast-food diet.
More recently, there has been a growing field of study into the effects of food not only on our physical health, but also our mental health. And with that, an increase of easily accessible information online, some of it unverified, and at times contradictory.
