#26: Eating for Mental Health with Professor Felice Jacka

Food and Mood is the topic of the podcast this week where we’re talking about ‘Eating for Mental Health’ with Professor Felice Jacka, Director of the Food & Mood Centre at Deakin University in Australia.

Today I’m speaking to Professor Felice Jacka about her new book BRAIN CHANGER and how diet can save your mental health. The book tells the story of why we need to consider our food as the basis of our brain and mental health throughout our lives.

Prof Jacka first came on my radar when I heard of the SMILES trials - which we’ll talk about a little bit later in the Podcast.

Professor Jacka is also founder and president of the International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research (ISNPR) and pioneered a highly innovative program of research that examines how individual’s diets, and other lifestyle behaviours, interact with the risk for mental health problems.

Today we talk about:

• Where mental health begins
• Junk food and its impact on the adolescent brain
• Stress and its impact on the immune system
• The SMILES trials
• Including quality fats in your diet
• Making sure that you’re getting fibre into your diet
• Flavonoids, colours and getting more plants onto people’s plates

You’ll find the recipe video that I made with Professor Jacka, and our super interesting conversation - on my youtube channel go check it out online and there’s a link below too!

Have a listen to the podcast and enjoy - and don’t forget to give us a 5* rating on the podcast, it really does help to spread the message and for others to find us too!

Don’t forget to pick up a copy of my new book - Eat to Beat Illness - where I have a whole chapter dedicated to ‘Eat for your Mood’  - which I’m grateful to say mirrors a lot of what Felice Jacka has been talking about today and in her book.

And you can find all of this information and more at www.thedoctorskitchen.com and don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter for weekly science based recipes.