Nutrition and Mental Health - Bending Birches NP

Summary

Many variables affect our dietary intake. There are guidelines which provide recommendations on nutritional intake. Social influences also impact our eating habits, including social norms of beauty and health. All of these variables can impact what we eat and how we feel.

Many variables, including lifestyle choices, can affect our mental health. Nutritional habits are among the lifestyle choices we can change.

Starting this week, I would like to tackle nutrition.

Nutrition and Mental Health: Part I

The Why of Nutritional Recommendations

Nutritional recommendations are many and varied. Their purposes vary as well. Recommendations may be provided to promote overall medical health; to promote mental health; and, let’s face it, for social reasons.

What Influences Our Dietary Intake

Human beings over the millennia have created social norms which include what we eat; how we eat; where we eat; when we eat; with whom we eat; and why we eat.

How we eat includes what utensils and serving dishes we use for eating. Cultural and individual preferences exist.
Where we eat reveals options that can directly impact what we eat and why we eat. Some people prefer eating at home; others eat in public eateries. Other options exist.
When we eat is influenced by some other lifestyle choices, such as employment; family customs; cultural norms; sleep/wake cycle; caregiver role.
With whom we eat can similarly be affected by lifestyle choices; family customs; cultural norms; sleep/wake cycle; and caregiver role.
Why we eat reflects personal reasons and health choices (to maintain weight; to socialize; for body building; for emotional reasons; based on a learnt routine; for healing).
Not to be ignored is what we eat.

And, what we eat, tends to be the focus of recommendations about what we should change in order to promote healthy living.

Nutritional Intake Recommendations

The following sources are two examples of nutritional intake recommendations.

The Department of Health and Human Services in the USA has suggested food guidelines (https://health.gov/our-work/nutrition-physical-activity/dietary-guidelines) which have oft been criticized for a number of reasons, including the influence of lobby groups, think associations promoting one food group, in the development of these guidelines.

Research has demonstrated the benefits of certain culturally based dietary habits, the Mediterranean Diet being the most prominent, which has been associated with lowered mortality and morbidity, in general, when compared to the standard “Western diet”. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK557733/ Let’s be conscious of an overly Eurocentric approach.

The Elephant In The Room

What we tend to forget in our pursuit of health is the impact of social norms, especially norms related to what constitutes a beautiful body, on our food selections and our habits related to eating: the how, when, with whom, where, and why of eating. The discussion related to the manufacturing of beauty norms by society and the industrialization of remedies to meet those norms will not be broached here. I offer these considerations as food for thought, if you will forgive the pun. These norms can certainly affect our mental health.

In the next part, I will discuss the idea of “diets” and how dietary intake may be implicated in fostering mental well-being.

Bon appétit!