Low Fat Diet Mental Health
About two thirds of your brain is actually made of fat. Ponder that for a moment. Is there a Low Fat Diet Mental Health connection? For more than 40 years scientists and dietitians have told us that eating fat is bad. The message has been that all animal fat is bad, and you should avoid it when you can. They urged us to eat light oils derived from plants, such as sunflower, safflower and soybean oil. Dietitians told us to replace butter with margarine.
The origin of the low fat diet fad
And now it turns out that this advice was completely, totally, 100% wrong. This advice was based upon research done by a scientist called Ansel Keys. He found that there was less heart disease in countries where the population ate less saturated fat. He therefore concluded that saturated fat was the cause of heart disease. This message was accepted and promoted by US health agencies and became official policy of governments all round the world for decades.
At the time, many scientists challenged this thinking. However, those scientists were steamrolled out of the way, their funding was reduced, and they were publicly vilified. The result was that alternative theories quickly disappeared. The only acceptable research in nutrition was research that aimed to prove that saturated fat was bad. But it now looks like the Keys research method was flawed.
The role of sugar in mental health
Recent research is now pointing the finger at sugar. There is a movement gaining strength now that says sugar is the cause of heart disease. It also points the finger at other simple carbohydrates. These are things like wheat flour, cornflour, rice, and to a certain extent potatoes. More and more studies suggest that it is a combination of white flour and sugar that is causing the obesity epidemic.
I went into my local supermarket recently. I went searching for any food products that did not contain sugar, or wheat flour, or cornstarch, or rice starch. Only three products in five aisles of packaged foods had none. Makes you think,
This is of more than passing interest to therapists. The research into low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet has shown that as well causing physical diseases, it may well be responsible for a range of mental illnesses, and depression in particular.
Suggested reading on Low Fat Diet Mental Health
There is now more and more compelling evidence that changing your diet to high-fat, low carbohydrate can actually cure long-term mental illnesses.
It is very early days yet, and more research is needed. Maybe you need to look at your client's diet as part of your therapy approach?
Sources:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/diagnosis-diet/201903/the-brain-needs-animal-fat
https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/advancing-psychiatry/201904/chronic-schizophrenia-put-remission-without-medication
