The Happiness Diet
A Nutritional Prescription for a Sharp Brain, Balanced Mood, and Lean, Energized Body
What if happiness began at the end of your fork? The latest research on neuroscience and nutrition tells us that’s a VERY wise place to start. And, of course, that’s what this book is all about: A Nutritional Prescription for a Sharp Brain, Balanced Mood, and Lean, Energized Body. It’s a really well-written, eye-opening look at how we got into the nutritional mess we’re in and the extremely damaging effects of the modern American diet. And, of course, more importantly, how we can optimize our nutrition so we can dial in the three facets of happiness: our focus, our mood, and our energy.
Big Ideas
- Want to Get Mad (+ Sad)? Eat the Modern American DietJust eat what most people eat.
- Beaver Anal Gland Juice Anyone? (The Top 100 Reasons to Avoid Processed Foods)Who knew it’s in pudding?
- Food For Thought (+ Energy + Good Mood)+ Food for energy + food for mood.
- Carbage Out, Nutrients InNutrients in.
- Best Way to Keep Smiling Is to Keep TryingKeep trying.
- Voting with Every BiteIt matters.
“What if you discovered that the best place to begin your personal pursuit of happiness is at the end of your fork? Emerging research from the fields of neuroscience and nutrition shows that by changing what you eat, you can improve your mental and emotional well-being. You can stabilize your moods. You can improve your focus. You can even make your brain grow.
So what do we mean by happiness? There have been many books published in recent years that explore different approaches to attaining happiness—some from motivation speakers, others from experts in the field of positive psychology. At their core these are suggestions for behavioral changes that are meant to improve your psychological well-being and outlook on life. We are coming at this from a very different perspective: Before you start changing your outlook on life to improve your emotional well-being, we want to make sure your eating behavior is the best it can be so that the master mood regulator—the brain—is provided with what it needs to be strong, sharp, healthy … and happy.
Increasingly, in our experience, it seems that fewer people truly feel they have control over their diet. ‘It’s just too hard to eat right,’ we often hear. ‘Everyone says something different’ is another refrain we get a lot. We want to change this state of affairs and settle the confusion about what needs to be eaten for a happy, healthy brain and body. The Happiness Diet provides concrete tools (tasty ones, too) for doing just that.”
~ Tyler Graham and Drew Ramsey, MD from The Happiness Diet
What if happiness began at the end of your fork?
The latest research on neuroscience and nutrition tells us that’s a VERY wise place to start.
And, of course, that’s what this book is all about: A Nutritional Prescription for a Sharp Brain, Balanced Mood, and Lean, Energized Body.
Tyler Graham is a wellness expert who was the health editor at O, The Oprah Magazine before launching the health section for Details magazine. Drew Ramsey, MD, is a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and practicing psychiatrist who specializes in the treatment of anxiety and mood disorders. The two teamed up to write a great book.
The Happiness Diet is a really well-written, eye-opening look at how we got into the nutritional mess we’re in and the extremely damaging effects of the modern American diet. And, of course, more importantly, how we can optimize our nutrition so we can dial in the three facets of happiness: our focus, our mood, and our energy. (Get a copy here.)
It’s packed with Big Ideas and I’m excited to share a few of my favorites so let’s jump in!
Download MP3
Download PDFA large study recently published in the British Journal of Psychiatry found that eating processed foods, such as refined carbohydrates, sweets, and processed meats, increased the risk of depression by about 60%. Eating a wholefood diet, on the other hand, decreased the risk of the disease by about 26%.
Get the Book
Listen to the PodcastWant to Get Mad (+ Sad)? Eat the Modern American Diet
“Thanks to the introduction of industrial-scale food processing, Americans have changed their dietary habits more in the past 100 years than all of humanity had in the previous 100,000. The Modern American Diet—we call it the MAD—is characterized first and foremost by large amounts of simple sugars and refined carbohydrates now found in everything from cereal to pasta. These sugars play tricks on your brain, so you keep craving more of them, even though excess consumption of these foods actually contributes to the shrinkage of key areas of your brain responsible for everything from memories to mood regulation.
The second largest source of calories in the MAD are added fats—refined vegetable and seed oils that have high amounts of omega-6 fats as well as trans fats, which have been linked to an increased risk of depression. A third critical aspect of the MAD most detrimental to our brain functioning is the factory farming of cows, pigs, chickens, and even fish. Not only are these creatures pumped full of antibiotics and hormones to promote their growth, but they feed on an unnatural diet of grain, which leaves their flesh deficient in many of the very fats and nutrients our brains have required from animals since the dawn of humankind. Strange as it seems, with the MAD you can expand your waistline and starve your brain at the same time, which is exactly what growing numbers of Americans are doing.
Study after study in the medical research journals confirm that people who are most dependent on MAD-style eating habits have increased levels of depression, anxiety, mood swings, hyperactivity, and a wide variety of other mental and emotional problems. Our belief, backed up by ample research, is that the best way to prevent the MAD assault on our health and happiness is to go back to eating the wholesome foods that nurtured the development of our brains over millions of years of evolution.”
One of the most important things to recognize as we optimize our diets (and lives) is the fact that what we eat has changed more in the last 100 years than in the prior 100,000 years.
Think about that for a moment. That’s a LOT of change in a very short period of time.Get this:
We didn’t EVER have a drop of vegetable oil (like soybean, corn, canola, safflower oil) until around 100 years ago. Now? Now 20% of our calories come from soybean oil
alone
.
(TWENTY PERCENT!!!!)
You don’t need to think very hard about that one to realize it’s not a good idea, eh? And, know that science shows that elevated levels of omega-6 (which is a direct result of overconsumption of these vegetable oils + the factory farmed meats that have been fed an unnatural grain-based diet) INCREASE LEVELS OF DEPRESSION.
Sugar essentially didn’t exist in our diets a thousand years ago. We basically consumed ZERO refined sugar (of course, we enjoyed fruits in season with their fiber intact, etc.) But NO sugar. 300 years ago? 5 pounds per year. Now? We consume 150 pounds of it per person per year. CRAZY.
“Over the course of the past two hundred years, we’ve increased our sugar intake by 3,000 percent. This is the single biggest change to the human diet since the invention of fire.”
How about refined flour? We’ve been enjoying bread since the dawn of the agricultural revolution ~10,000 years ago. But all of the wheat was STONE ground (keeping key nutrients intact) until the 1880s. Then we figured out how to industrially process the wheat (and corn and all other grains) with an iron roller and our truly whole grain bread (and other products) became some weird edible foodlike substance with refined flours that act very much like sugar in our bodies. Again, not wise.
If you wonder what the effects of those types of changes might be, just look at the current health stats—with the majority of people overweight and a frightening, unprecedented number of people suffering from depression, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.
Call it the Modern American Diet or the Standard American Diet or whatever you’d like but know that it’s making us MAD *and* SAD.
We’re expanding our waistline while starving (and actually SHRINKING) our brain. <– Not a good combo.
Quick check list of what needs to go:
Simple sugars + refined carbs
Veggie oils (start w/trans fats: EVERYTHING with “partially hydrogenated oil” MUST GO!)
Factory farmed animal products
Remember: Your brain is only 2% of your body weight but it consumes 20% of your fuel. What we feed it matters. A lot.
While the brain accounts for about 2 percent of your body’s weight, it burns 20 percent of your body’s fuel. That’s because the brain is the body’s command center—the most complex supercomputer ever created.
Animal fat—the kind that doesn’t come from factory-farm animals eating unnatural diets—is anything but unhealthy for the human body. It’s what we’ve been subsisting on for tens of thousands of years. It’s what your body was designed to eat.
Beaver Anal Gland Juice Anyone? (The Top 100 Reasons to Avoid Processed Foods)
“Deciphering food label ingredients leads to unappetizing results. Take the innocuous-sounding castoreum, which is used to enhance the flavor of puddings, candies, and some frozen dairy desserts. You might be surprised to know that it’s derived from beavers—beaver anal glands.”
Throughout the book, Graham and Ramsey share 100 different reasons to avoid processed foods. That’s #1.
Next time you have a packaged pudding or candy or frozen dairy dessert (or give one to your kid), imagine squirting a little beaver anal gland juice in it. <— Because that’s awesome, right?
Laughing. Wow. Seriously?
Who thought beaver anal gland juice would be a great addition to our diet?
That’s actually not a rhetorical question.
The answer: Food scientists working at jumbo-huge fake food factories.
On that note, here’s another reason to NOT buy/eat processed foods (one of the 100): Did you know that Big Tobacco owns many of American’s most popular processed-food brands like Kraft + Nabisco? Yep.
Last time I checked, tobacco companies aren’t typically *that* interested in our health.
In fact, tobacco-owned companies are the kind of organizations that would think beaver anal gland juice would be a great treat/addition to the modern family’s lives—as long as it tastes better who will mind, right?!
They’re also the kind of companies that would spend TEN BILLION (!!) DOLLARS every year marketing junk food to kids. (Wonder if the tripling of the obesity rate among adolescents since 1980 might be connected …)
Oh, couple other fun facts to get you steering away from the toxic edible foodlike substances found in shiny boxes in the middle aisles of your local supermarket:
Did you know the FDA actually has acceptable levels of RAT HAIRS and MAGGOTS allowed into processed food?
Yah. Another awesome.
And, yes, I’m getting a little nauseous, too. Sorry. Hate to break the news to you but let’s vote with every dollar we spend and QUIT EATING THIS NONFOOD. In addition to destroying our health and happiness (and that of our next generation), it’s disgusting.
When we’re told to cook meat thoroughly to prevent foodborne illness, it’s not because raw meat is inherently dangerous, but rather because cooking factory-produced meat thoroughly helps to kill off any dangerous bacteria that might be lurking in our hamburgers.
Food For Thought (+ Energy + Good Mood)
“The pursuit of happiness takes consistent effort. This is why a lean, energized body is so vital to cognitive functioning, emotional regulation, and anxiety. When you have a lot of energy, cognitive tasks are easier to accomplish, frustrations easier to bear, and anxiety is less likely to overwhelm you. Proper brain nutrition creates a strong foundation from which you can create the life you want. Here’s our formula for brain happiness in its simplest form:
Clear thinking and focused attention = a greater ability to plan and execute.
Steady and content moods = a greater ability to absorb the frustrations of life and regulate your emotions.
Freedom from needless worry = turning your wheels, not spinning them.
PLUS
Energy to engage = a vibrant pursuit of all of life’s possibilities.
Achieving these ideals is possible only through a well-fed, well-nourished brain. It is interesting, though, that nearly all the most common prescriptions for improving cognitive functioning involve mental exercises such as puzzle-solving, and most treatments for emotional regulation and anxiety lean toward psychotherapy and medication. These remedies all have benefits, but dietary change is rarely suggested as a solution—even though the brain, like any other body organ, is highly reliant on a good diet for proper functioning.”
The book presents a bunch of research demonstrating how the food we eat affects our ability to focus, our energy levels, and our mood. It’s incredibly compelling. (As are the dietary recommendations to replace the “lost” nutrients they call the “Essential Elements of Happiness”—ranging from Vitamin B12 and Iodine to Magnesium, Cholesterol and Vitamin D. Check out the book for more details.)
In short: “Some of these studies show more conclusive results than others, but the one result you will never see is one that shows that the MAD improves cognitive function. Or that MAD foods deter depression. Or that those whose diets rely on MAD sugars and vegetable oils have lower rates of anxiety, dementia, or depression. The MAD is a hands-down loser when it comes to your mental, emotional, and physical well-being. It is so bad for you that you have to wonder how such a thing could ever develop and what the people who created it were thinking. Here’s a hint: They weren’t thinking about your happiness.”
Although those apps (+ therapy + medication) have benefits, we’d be wise to pull the lever that will give us the most strategic mojo: Walk to the grocery store, fuel up on A HAPPINESS DIET.
We’re omnivores by nature and, as such, we rely on a complex set of nutrients from minerals, plants, and animals for optimal health.
Carbage Out, Nutrients In
“The word sugar is synonymous with carbohydrate. All plants are constructed of sugars, and popularly we know these as complex carbohydrates. So whether we’re talking about romaine lettuce or oats or asparagus, these are all complex carbohydrates. The opposite, of course, is known as simple carbohydrates or simple sugars. These are plants that have been refined and processed to create things like pasta, bread, pizza dough, and fruit juice. Collectively, we refer to these foods as ‘carbage,’ or carbohydrate garbage. They make up the majority of calories in the MAD lifestyle. Whether it comes in the form of soda or pasta, carbage is one of the main dietary culprits behind America’s uptick in weight and downtick in happiness. Carbage is so new to our diet that our bodies don’t have off switches to tell our brains when we’ve eaten enough of these simple sugars—but protein, fat, and complex carbohydrates have these ‘switches.’ When we eat meats, dairy, and whole vegetables, they tell our digestive and nervous systems that we’ve had enough and should stop eating. Your body knows when you’ve eaten your fill of whole foods.”
Not all carbs are created equal.
There’s the good stuff with complex carbohydrates found in whole plant foods, then there’s the fast-acting refined simple carbohydrates we can now refer to as carbohydrate garbage.
CARBAGE.
We need to get good at knowing it when we see it.
Here’s how Mark Hyman describes a quality carb in Eat Fat, Get Thin: “A quality carbohydrate will contain both phytonutrients and fiber. It will be whole and unprocessed and have had a very short distance from field to fork. How many ‘processing steps’ does broccoli need to get to your plate? Hardly any—just cut it off the stalk, wash off the dirt, steam or saute, and voila, it’s on your plate. If your food took a pit stop in a factory, you might want to reconsider eating it unless you can still recognize it, like an artichoke in a can or jar, or a nut that has been removed from its shell. A quality carb will not contain refined flours, additives, preservatives, fillers, sweeteners, dyes, or any other ingredient normally found in processed foods. Bottom line: If you can’t pronounce an ingredient or recognize it as originating from nature, don’t eat it!”
In Food Rules, Michael Pollan gives us 64 great rules to follow—many of which pertain to getting the carbage out. Check out the Notes for some good rules.
One of my favorites: If it’s a plant, eat it. If it was made IN a plant, don’t. :)
Carbage out, nutrients in.
It might be surprising to hear, but sugar is a relatively new food in our diet. For the vast majority of human existence, no one had access to this sweet substance.
When humans hunted and gathered their food, they ate a much wider variety of plants. ... One of the most pristinely preserved of these humans’... stomach was stuffed with an astonishing 66 different species of plants—an astonishing variety considering today we only eat about twenty different plants.
Best Way to Keep Smiling Is to Keep Trying
“If you hit your local drive-thru a few times a week or are used to (we’d even say hooked on) eating refined carbohydrates and sugars every day, you might want to ease into things. People fail at making dietary changes for several reasons, but one we’d like you to check at the door is catastrophizing, or all-or-nothing thinking.
Moving in the right direction, even generally, is progress. Period. You can’t ruin a diet or your health with a single meal or fast-food binge. The best way to keep smiling is to keep trying.”
The book provides a plan to get your Happiness Diet on along with a bunch of great recipes.
And… That wisdom. Start slowly if you need or want to. And, whatever you do, don’t catastrophize the inevitable oopses.
Bake that into your plan. Go for your best and know that you are human and will not do.it.all.perfectly every.single.moment.of.every.day.
No all-or-nothing mentality needed. Check that at the door.
Daniel Amen puts it this way in Change Your Brain Change Your Life: “When people come to see me they are usually not doing very well. Over time, if they work the plan we develop, they get better. But no one gets better in a straight line. They get better, then there is a setback, then they get better still, then there may be a setback, then they continue to improve. Over time, they reach a new steady state where they are consistently better. The setbacks are critically important, because if we pay attention to them, they can be our best teachers.
Do you learn from your failures or ignore them? New brain-imaging research suggests that when some people fail their motivation centers become more active, making it more likely they will be able to learn from their experience. When others fail the brain’s pain centers become more active—it literally hurts—making it more likely they will do whatever they can to avoid thinking about the episode, which means they are more likely to repeat the mistake. Learn from your mistakes and use them as stepping stones to success.”
Remember: No one gets better in a straight line. Zig zags.
As we discuss in Conquering Perfectionism 101, it’s all about incremental optimization aggregated and compounded over time.
The best way to keep smiling is to keep trying.
Thomas Jefferson grew more than 150 species of fruit and some 330 vegetables on his estate, Monticello.
Voting with Every Bite
“Good food, healthy food for America is something that people of all political and economic stripes should agree on. We should all desire to give our children food that grows brains ready to engage with the world and poised to learn all that our schools have to offer. So next time you pick up your fork, remember that you’re not just making a decision that impacts your mood and waistline—you’re also choosing what kind of country you want to live in.”
Those are the final words of the book.
As we discussed above, we’re voting with every dollar we spend—not just for our own health but the health of our country and the next generation.
What small (or big!) changes can you make as you zig-zag your way to even higher levels of noble optimizing awesome?
Let’s do that. And let’s do this
About the authors
