Using Food to Improve Mood

Health Is More Than Not Being Sick

In 1946, the World Health Organisation defined health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” I often return to this definition because it quietly challenges how we measure health. You can have excellent blood results, a healthy weight, and good physical fitness, yet still feel flat, anxious, or disconnected. Mental health is not secondary. It is foundational.

Everyone feels sad from time to time. That is part of being human. Depression, however, is something else entirely. It can involve weeks or months of low mood, loss of interest in life, changes in appetite or sleep, fatigue, guilt, difficulty concentrating, and recurrent thoughts of death. It is common, serious, and at times life threatening.

Happiness, Health, and the Immune System

Good mental health is not simply the absence of depression. Not being depressed does not automatically mean feeling well. For decades, research focused almost exclusively on illness rather than happiness, but the field of positive psychology has begun to ask a different question. Do happier people become healthier, or are healthier people simply happier?

Long term studies suggest that people who begin life with higher levels of psychological wellbeing tend to live longer and experience less illness. To test this more directly, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University did something extraordinary. Volunteers were paid to be exposed to cold and flu viruses under controlled conditions.

Not everyone exposed to a virus becomes sick. The immune system often fights it off. The striking finding was that people who were anxious, hostile, or depressed were significantly more likely to fall ill than those who were emotionally positive, even after sleep, stress, and exercise were accounted for. Mood, quite literally, shaped immunity.

Why Food Matters for Mental Health

This is where food enters the conversation. What we eat influences inflammation, neurotransmitters, immune function, and brain chemistry. It can support emotional resilience or quietly erode it over time.

Certain foods appear to increase the risk of low mood by promoting inflammation, particularly in the brain. One compound receiving growing attention is arachidonic acid.

Inflammation and Mood: Arachidonic Acid

Arachidonic acid is found primarily in animal foods and is converted by the body into inflammatory chemicals. Inflammation is useful in short bursts, such as when fighting infection, but chronic inflammation is increasingly linked to depression and mood disorders.

The main dietary sources include:

• Chicken and eggs
• Beef and pork
• Some fish

People eating plant based diets consume far less arachidonic acid and consistently report lower levels of depression, anger, fatigue, and confusion. These findings are not only observational. When regular meat eaters removed meat and eggs from their diets, significant improvements in mood appeared within just two weeks.

What Happens When Diets Change

Workplace studies provide further insight. Employees encouraged to follow whole food plant based diets reported improvements in energy, sleep, digestion, physical functioning, and mental health. Despite removing familiar foods, participants often reported greater satisfaction with their diets and measurable improvements in work productivity.

Fighting the Blues with Greens

Higher intake of fruits and vegetables is strongly associated with lower rates of depression. These foods supply antioxidants and phytonutrients that protect the brain from oxidative stress. They also influence an enzyme called monoamine oxidase, which breaks down mood related neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine.

Many plant foods gently inhibit this enzyme in a natural way, helping explain their mood supporting effects.

Foods linked with improved emotional wellbeing include:

• Leafy green vegetables
• Berries, apples, and grapes
• Onions and tomatoes
• Green tea and culinary spices such as cinnamon and cloves

Tomatoes are particularly notable. Lycopene, their red pigment, is one of the most powerful dietary antioxidants. People who eat tomatoes daily appear to have roughly half the risk of depression compared with those who eat them rarely.

Seeds, Carbohydrates, and Serotonin

Serotonin is often called the happiness hormone, but eating serotonin rich foods does not directly raise brain serotonin. Serotonin itself cannot cross into the brain. Its precursor, an amino acid called tryptophan, can.

Tryptophan reaches the brain more easily when meals are rich in carbohydrates and lower in protein. This helps explain why carbohydrate rich meals can feel calming and why many women experience carbohydrate cravings during PMS.

Seeds such as sesame, sunflower, pumpkin, and squash provide tryptophan in a helpful balance. In clinical trials, squash seeds have even demonstrated rapid improvements in anxiety.

Saffron: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Evidence

Saffron has been used medicinally for thousands of years. In modern clinical trials, it has performed as well as antidepressant medication in reducing symptoms of depression, with fewer side effects. Even more intriguingly, studies show that simply smelling saffron can reduce stress hormones and anxiety, even when people cannot consciously detect its aroma.

Sometimes the nervous system responds before the thinking mind does.

Coffee, Sweeteners, and Hidden Mood Disruptors

Moderate coffee consumption has been associated with a lower risk of suicide, yet what is added to coffee matters. Sugar and artificial sweeteners appear to negate many of its benefits. Aspartame in particular has been linked to increased irritability and depressive symptoms, even in people without prior mental illness.

Artificial sweeteners are now found in thousands of processed foods, which is reason enough to spend most of your shopping time in the produce section.

Exercise Versus Antidepressants

Exercise is often treated as a side note in mental health discussions, yet controlled trials show it can be as effective as antidepressant medication for many people. Whether done alone or in groups, regular movement has been shown to bring depression into remission, without the side effects associated with drugs.

Even if part of the benefit comes from belief or expectation, exercise brings gains rather than risks.

Food as a Foundation for Emotional Wellbeing

Food is not a substitute for therapy, connection, meaning, or medical care when it is needed. But it is a foundation. What we eat every day speaks directly to the brain, the immune system, and the emotional centres of the body.

Sometimes the path to feeling better does not begin with a prescription, but with what we choose to put on our plate.

Photo by Ron Lach