#26: Eating for Mental Health with Professor Felice Jacka

12th Aug 2019

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!