Your food choices dictate much more of your life than you might imagine. That’s how you keep things on … [+]
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When we talk about the general health of our psyche, food is not the first thing that comes up in the conversation. Pop culture and social media frame things like childhood trauma, toxic relationships, and troubled personalities as the face of mental illness. As such, the most common reasons, such as consistently poor diet and lifestyle, often go unnoticed.
Yes, you read it right. Food, hunger, and diet play a much bigger role when it comes to our mental health than we think. Here are two research-backed examples of how our eating habits affect our mental health.
#1. Food choices can lead to social isolation
There are as many types of diets and food restrictions in the world today as there are types of food. There is veganism, vegetarianism, pescetarianism, dairy-free and gluten-free diets, just to name a few.
It’s hard to say whether this abundance of choice is good or bad for our mental health. However, there is research showing that diets with very specific dietary restrictions can have the unintended consequence of increasing feelings of loneliness and social isolation.
“Food consumption is an inherently social activity, as people often acquire, prepare and eat food in social contexts,” state researchers Kaitlin Woolley, Ayelet Fishbach and Rongham Michelle Wang say. “We found that dietary restrictions predict loneliness. People who can’t eat what everyone else is eating are, to a certain extent, less able to bond with others over a meal.”
The researchers report that the relationship between food restriction and loneliness is equivalent in magnitude to the association between singleness and loneliness, which they also measured in the study.
“Both food restrictions and loneliness are social problems on the rise; this research found that they may be related epidemics,” they suggest.
If you think your dietary restrictions are getting in the way of your social life and making you feel more alone, it may be time to have a conversation with your loved ones to ask them to make space for you in their lives. This could mean asking them to stock up on things you can eat or planning social gatherings at restaurants that have multiple diet options on the menu.
Alternatively, there may be areas where you could make food compromises that make it easier to coordinate a shared meal that everyone enjoys. Surely many parents reading this will have experience in this regard, perhaps in the form of macaroni and cheese and a juice box dinner or some other questionably healthy but kid-approved food combination.
#two. Extremely healthy eating can be unhealthy
Weight loss and a slim body are considered characteristics of a healthy person in our society. Keep in mind that this is a pretty reductive way of looking at overall health and wellness. Furthermore, the pursuit of a slim body can lead to various mental health conditions, including eating disorders.
Orthorexia is a condition associated with significant dietary restrictions, including the omission of entire food groups. Orthorectics tend not to eat foods that have been processed with pesticides, herbicides, or artificial substances, and they are very concerned about the techniques and materials involved in food preparation. Sounds familiar?
Simply put, orthorexia is such an extreme form of healthy eating that it’s unhealthy.
“Orthorexia nervosa is a type of eating disorder that can easily hide behind the premise of clean or healthy eating,” explains Dr. Wendy Oliver-Pyatt, medical director of Within Health.
According to Oliver-Pyatt, the search for health for orthopedics becomes a somewhat mechanical experience.
“The social aspect of eating and the enjoyment of eating is seen as irrelevant to the patient, who will forego social interactions and potentially meaningful and important aspects of life in pursuit of healthy eating,” he says. “Hyperfocus on food ingredients deprives a person of the very real, human, vivid, and joyous experience of eating.”
For people at risk of developing this condition, Oliver-Pyatt suggests focusing on fixing the relationship with food by practicing what she calls “internal regulation.”
“When our eating is internally regulated (what we call mindful eating), our eating patterns change in such a way that we don’t overeat or undereat,” she says. “The orchestra of neurotransmitters and hormones that connect the brain and the gut, and the body, can interact and guide us to eat according to our biological and even, yes, psychological needs.”
Conclusion: While it may sound trite, you are in fact what you eat, even when it comes to your mental health. Research on diet and its effects on our minds points to a reality that is often ignored: mental health is not just about addressing your emotions in therapy, but also about maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
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