The Delicate Relationship Between Food and Mood: Two Peas in a Pod
Have you ever noticed a dramatic mood change in yourself or your friend before and after you eat?
We get irritated when we are hungry,
But we dance and hum when we take a bite of our favorite food.
It is amazing how much of an impact food has on us. Even the topic of food can bring people together, I know from experience that food can mend friendships and create bonds. We know for a fact that food is important to us as living beings to release energy and provide us with relevant nutrients, but it goes far beyond that. Food and mood influence each other, and it is important to understand the dynamic relationship to make better dietary choices.
Now I am sure we have all heard the phrase “you are what you eat”, I cannot say I completely understand this phrase, it may be because I find it hard to accept that I am really a walking McDonald’s cheeseburger, but I will try to explain some of the rather simple ways food influences our mood.
Firstly, we will begin with the most hated upon food group, carbohydrates. While a lot of people pride in cutting out carbs from their diet, it is a crucial food group that allows for a more consistent and slow release of energy. Why do you get irritable when you are hungry? When your blood sugar level drops, you feel tired and weak, your body is trying to scrape up all the energy it can, leaving you with little tolerance. Next, we move on to the most preached and advertise miracle liquid, Water. Less water leads to dehydration, dehydration leads to headaches, constipation and other things that leave us in a bad mood. While still staying on the topic of gut functions, increased intake of fruits, vegetables and whole grains have a positive effect on our gut process speeding it up. Feeling anxious and stressed slows down the gut and as said earlier this makes us uncomfortable, thus, eating the right food can help put us in a better mood. Next, we have the wolf in sheep’s skin, caffeine. The energy booster that saves the day in time of trouble and magically gives us superhuman focus (most of us anyway), is a stimulant, meaning although the energy burst is nice, it could make you feel anxious, emotionally down (when it wears out suddenly and also when you really are tired but have an unusual amount of energy) and could disturb your sleep (mood and sleep is a topic for another day).
In reverse effect, being stressed and anxious can cause you to crave foods high in calories, when things seem difficult your body is in fight-flight mode and craves for more fuel causing you to reach for more food’s high in sugar and fats. Likewise, when we are in a happier mood, we crave better options, a study showed that when watching happy movies people opted for fruits while when watching a sad movie, they reached for popcorn.
In conclusion, humans are social beings, we are wired to form connections with our fellow humans as well as inanimate objects; such as a pen, your phone, a pillow, clothes, your favorite food and so on. We, in other words are emotional beings because emotion runs the boat of our social interactions. It is certainly then surprising that it has a woven relationship with on the things we are so dependent on for survival. “You are what you eat”, well I guess we could all agree now that food does really define us way more than we think.
