Your food may be to blame for your mental illness.
It turns out some of the biggest manufacturers of cereal are fraudulently advertising their ingredients, and what they’re putting into your bodies is bad for your mind.
General Mills Total Blueberry Pomegranate Cereal, Kellogs Frosted Blueberry Mini Wheats, Kelloggs Special K Fruit Crisps, Fiber One Blueberry Muffin Mixes—[please insert your non-organic cereal name here] do not contain the ingredients in their pictures or their names.
These breakfast foods and countless others do not have real blueberries, pomegranates or the other fruits they purport to have. Instead, those colorful little antioxidant look-a-like berries in the names and package pictures of your breakfast foods are actually hydrogenated oils and liquid sugars! Yup, you read that correctly—its sugar and chemical specifically red 40, Blue 1, Blue 2, dextrose, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, citric oil, high fructose corn syrup—the list is endless.
If I were you, I would run to your cabinet and pitch these breakfast chemicals in your nearest wastebasket.
Guess what else these dishonest companies are marketing to your body? Depression and Anxiety. Recent studies published by Psychology Today suggest that the chemicals and sugar based diets of Americans could be causing and worsening Major Depressive Disorder and a litany of other psychological and psychiatric conditions.
According to this study the years of trans fat, hydrogenation, and chemical forms of fructose must come to an end if the alarming rates of anxiety, depression and other psychological aliments are to be addressed.
In fact, Nutritional Science could very well be part of your next psychotherapy session or psychiatric check-up.
Here are some of the findings:
- A diet that draws heavily on fatty foods and only lightly on fruits and vegetables isn’t just bad for your heart and linked to certain cancers—it may also be a major cause of depression and aggression.
- The health of your brain depends not only on how much fat you eat but on what kind it is. Intellectual performance requires the specific type of fat found most commonly in fish. Even diets that adhere to the wrong kinds of fat can undermine intelligence.
- Carbohydrates—especially when eaten with no protein or fat—may indeed be mentally soothing and later mentally plummeting. Eat in moderation with vegetables and proteins.
- High blood levels of cholesterol, and especially triglycerides, are strongly correlated with the incidence of affective disorders, including depression, manic depression, and schizoaffective disorder.
- A diet high in saturated fat not only can make you depressed and downright antisocial, it can also impair general mental performance.
For a healthy brain and psyche, WebMD recommends:
1) Blueberries: the REAL kind. If you are not a fan of straight-up produce blueberries, check out organic cereals and cereal bars.
2) Wild Salmon: Hopefully, after the recent oil spill there are some left!!
3) Nuts and Seeds: You don’t have to become a bird. Just a handful a day!
4) Whole Grains: The REAL kind—not the GMO Kelloggs, General Mills and Betty Crocker cereal kind.
5) Beans: not the bean-less Taco Bell variety, but the old-fashioned recipes that grandma made that were beanalicious!
6) Pomegranate Juice: The REAL variety—not the “chemical concoction” in breakfast foods
7) Dark Chocolate: music to every women’s ears! Hold up – and watch the sugar! Moderation and lots of cacao!
So, the next time you head to the grocery store, be mindful and alert as to what goes in your shopping cart and ultimately your belly. Food manufacturers are not your friends. Your grocery store choices could mean the difference between an alert psyche or conditions of depression and anxiety.
— Liz Schreiber
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