American Fitness Professionals & Associates

By: Deborah Kesten, MPH

The foods you choose may influence your behavior and emotional well-being.

Food and Mood by Design

“In the past, whether food worked for you or against you usually was a matter of luck or choice. It no longer has to be that way. With all that we now know about the food/mind/mood connection…you can begin to select (food) that will power your brain, modify your moods, and in the process make you a more effective, motivated, and perhaps even more contented individual.” Judith J. Wurtman, Ph.D. Managing Your Mind and Mood Through Food

Imagine choosing one type of food to alleviate anxiety, another to bolster brain power, or yet another to curb your urge to splurge on that donut. A new field of pioneering nutrition research, often referred to as the study of food and mood, is confirming what many of us have always suspected: What and when we eat can affect our mind and mood, the tendency to pile on pounds-even the quality of our lives. For example, to curb the urge to splurge on that donut, you could instead choose a lower fat sweet/fat food combination, such as graham crackers, fig newtons, or hot chocolate made with skim milk.

Richard Wurtman, M.D. and Judith Wurtman, Ph.D., scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), first linked food with mood when they found that the sugar and starch in carbohydrate foods boosted a powerful brain chemical called “serotonin.” Soon they linked serotonin and other neurotransmitters (substances that pass information from cell to cell in the brain) to our every mood, emotion or craving. For instance, they noted that eating carbohydrate-rich foods (breads, cereals, pasta, fruits and starchy vegetables such as potatoes, winter squash or corn) elevated serotonin levels, helping you to feel more relaxed and calm; high protein foods (nonfat dairy products such as cottage cheese, yogurt or milk; or beans, peas, nuts and also soy products, such as tofu or soy milk) had the opposite effect: They released other substances that let you think and react more quickly, or feel more alert and energetic.

Carbohydrate Cravings

More current studies have shed additional light on issues surrounding carbohydrate intake and mood. Researchers at Rockefeller University in New York believe food cravings may be hints from Mother Nature. Perhaps the sugar cravings many women experience at puberty, premenstrually, during pregnancy, and after menopause, could be a response to estrogen’s effect on brain chemicals and blood sugar levels.

“Women may be more sensitive to changes in serotonin than men,” explains Catherine Christie, Ph.D., R.D., a food/mood specialist in Jacksonville, Florida. “When estrogen levels fall and progesterone levels are high” serotonin levels may drop.
“We postulate that this drop is why women crave carbohydrates during (certain) times of the menstrual cycle. If serotonin levels fall, appetite increases, particularly for carbohydrates.” The same mechanism seems to occur during perimenopause, the menopausal transition. “When estrogen levels decline,” says Dr. Christie, “there’s (often) increased appetite, carbohydrate craving and reported weight gain. This may also be related to changes in serotonin.”

Chocolate “High”

Taking the female food/mood research a step further, University of Michigan researchers have linked the desire for sugar with its ability to calm; for fat, with its ability to elevate moods. Adam Drewnowski, Ph.D., director of the Human Nutrition Program at the University of Michigan, believes it’s not carbohydrates we crave, it’s fat.

The real craving, he thinks, is triggered when we combine sugar with fat, creating a sweet-and-creamy concoction that’s hard to resist. According to Drewnowski and Barbara Smith, Ph.D., a researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, it is endorphins-naturally occurring substances in the brain that produce pleasurable feelings-that function as pain killers. They believe we crave high fat, sugar-laden foods to experience the blues-bursting benefits of endorphins. These findings could explain cravings for chocolate. With its 50 percent fat/50 percent sugar content-plus an endorphin-releasing substance called phenylethylamine-chocolate may offer the perfect blend of ingredients both to stimulate and soothe at the same time.

The fat and sugar in chocolate can raise both serotonin and endorphin levels, which explains why women may crave chocolate both before and during their menstrual periods. But because it’s not nutritionally smart to eat chocolate, to get the same brain-chemical change, choose high complex carbohydrates, such as whole grain bread or crackers to stabilize serotonin levels. To keep endorphin levels up, try a regular exercise program.

But what if the chocolate urge doesn’t go away? Debra Waterhouse, MPH, RD writes in her book about chocolate cravings, “there is no evidence that small amounts of chocolate pose any harm to health or well-being (so) satisfying a chocolate urge in moderation might be the best strategy.”

Anti-Stress Strategies

Can certain foods help to alleviate the effects of stress-related tension? When United States Department of Agriculture researchers studied the physical and emotional impact a high-stress week had on people eating adequate diets, they found that blood and tissue levels of certain vitamins and minerals dropped by as much as 33 percent. In the long-term, this depleted nutrient supply can translate into a weakened immune system and lowered resistance to ailments ranging from colds and infections to cardiovascular disease, asthma and perhaps cancer, concludes Elizabeth Somer in her book, Food and Mood.

The remedy? She suggests supplements of vitamins and minerals that are especially vital to nourishing the body when it’s under stress. These include: magnesium, antioxidants (especially C, E and beta-carotene), B-vitamins and iron. Somer also recommends “keeping away from the two worst offenders: caffeine (found in chocolate, coffee, tea and cola) and refined sugar.” Her rationale: “During times when you need your mental, physical and emotional reserves, sugar and caffeine can send your blood-sugar levels plummeting and leave your brain chemistry in disarray.”

To ease stress, she suggests avoiding caffeine and alcohol as well as high-fat, high-sugar, low-nutrient sweets. In their place, choose high-fiber foods (fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes). And if stress-overload has caused you to lose your appetite, eat small meals throughout the day.

The Caffeine Kick

It’s a psychoactive drug that in small amounts can lift your mood and make you more mentally alert. Too much can trigger anxiety, panic attacks and insomnia. Caffeine. It’s used by millions of people to keep the energy flowing and “get through the day.”

Closer scrutiny by scientists of this “popular drug” shows that caffeine stimulates by suppressing what author Jean Carper calls “‘down’ brain chemicals instead of releasing ‘up’ chemicals. (This causes) brain cells (to) remain in a state of excitability,” she writes in her book, Food-Your Miracle Medicine.

How much caffeine is enough to produce mental alertness? As little as a cup or two of coffee (100-200 mg.) daily or a small serving of carbonated cola (32 mg.) can improve mental performance and alertness, reduce fatigue, and work as a natural antidote to the slump many of us experience after eating. But when it comes to caffeine, less is better than more. Caffeine intoxication or abuse can produce anxiety, restlessness and other symptoms ranging from traumas and headache to irregular heartbeat, elevated blood pressure and cholesterol to nutrient deficiencies and poor concentration.

“Detoxing” from caffeine can be just as unpleasant. Withdrawal symptoms can include headaches, irritability, depression, fatigue, nausea and cramps. As with most nutritional recommendations, moderation seems to be the key to success.

Maximizing Performance

It might be easy to interpret food/mood research to mean that athletes shouldn’t eat carbohydrates before competing because they’ll be too relaxed to perform well. “This isn’t true,” says Dr. Christie. “When you look at the recommendations for carbohydrates in athletes, whenever they participate in an athletic event, the adrenaline that’s associated (with competition) seems to override any of the other effects that would be associated with serotonin and relaxation.” To eat to win, “we still recommend a high carbohydrate diet because it benefits the body and adults do better with exercise when they have a high carbohydrate diet.”

Which Comes First, Food or Mood?

While most researchers agree that a physiological “switch” occurs when we eat certain foods, not all agree on the cause. The chemical cornucopia in our brains and bodies isn’t always easy to understand. In the world of science, this means it’s hard to establish a direct link between our brain chemistry and our physical or emotional response. conditioning. For instance, if your mother rewarded you with chocolate chip cookies for doing well in school, you may continue to reward yourself with cookies as an adult when you finish a challenging task. Or perhaps choosing certain foods may not be about mood, but about what your body must have to meet its nutrient needs; this may mean you choose to snack on an orange for its vitamin C content, not its food/mood effect. Or, perhaps, feelings drive you to choose certain foods: A piece of pie may alleviate boredom; crunching on corn chips could augment anger.

Designing Moods

Food/mood research is still in its infancy. But given what science has currently revealed, what information is practical to use in our everyday lives? Dr. Christie believes each person’s situation is different. “People who have had a real stressful day may want to consider a carbohydrate snack (perhaps air-popped popcorn) in the afternoon to help them relax a bit. However, if they have a super-important meeting at 4:00 p.m., it may make more sense to choose a high-protein snack (such as nonfat yogurt) to get more of an alertness effect.”

When considering which foods to eat when, the first consideration is: do no harm. If a food/mood recommendation will ultimately limit, or conflict with your preferred diet, then the particular food may not be appropriate for you. When evaluating food/mood recommendations, ask yourself, is this something that’s reasonable for me to eat, to include in my diet? After considering the potential benefits of certain foods, consider your personal food preferences. The goal: to use your eating habits to gain more control over your moods, and in the process, enhance your daily performance.