Food’s effects on your body; from
emotions to energy.
We have
all heard the “thall shall not’s” of dieting:
·
Thall shall not consume sugar and dairy
·
Thall shall not eat fried or processed foods
·
Thall shall not eat GMOs and gluten
Besides
the number on the scale, or the dress size we wear, why should we watch what we
eat? How much do the foods we eat really effect our bodies; emotions, energy
level, complexion, hormones, heart health, etc.? When we eat or drink something our body
receives it as either a nutrient or a toxin. Food and drinks can help or hurt
your health. The choice is up to us, as always God sets before us life and
death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life that you and your seed may
live (Deuteronomy 30:19). We have a responsibility to learn what foods
contribute to life and what foods will lead to death, then to eat nourishing
meals that will strengthen our body to complete God’s assignment for our life
here on earth.
I cannot
overemphasize how important nutrition education is during this fast paced, ever
changing millennial generation. My
people are destroyed for lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6). If we do not have
knowledge about which foods can cause disease, and which can cure disease, we
run the risk of destroying our bodies by consuming harmful substances. Food is
not just calories but information – instructions that control your gene
expression, hormones, immune system, and brain chemistry and provide the raw
materials to build every cell of your body. The food you eat even determines
which gut bacteria flourish in your digestive tract – good guys or bad guys.
Each bite is literally controlling every function of your body.
Chronic
disease affects half of all Americans and accounts for 84 percent of our $3.8
trillion health care bill. This would be depressing except for one simple fact:
Most of these chronic illnesses are lifestyle-related diseases. That means
they’re preventable, treatable and often even reversible through changes in
lifestyle factors like proper diet, adequate exercise and managing stress. More
specifically, the food we eat (or don’t eat) is the single biggest driver of
chronic illness – everything from heart disease to diabetes, cancer to
dementia, arthritis to autoimmunity, and more. The beauty of the human body is
that if you take out the bad stuff and put in the good stuff, the body heals.
And it doesn’t take long – often just 10 days. And if you are really sick, you
can continue. Then in 40 days most chronic problems will dramatically improve
or go away entirely.
As early as medieval times, people
started to take great interest in how certain foods affected their mood and
temperament. Many medical culinary textbooks of the time described the
relationship between food and mood. For example, quince, dates and elderberries
were used as mood enhancers, lettuce and chicory as tranquilizers, and apples,
pomegranates, beef and eggs for fertility. The past 80 years have seen immense
progress in research, primarily short-term human trials and animal studies,
showing how certain foods change brain structure, chemistry, and physiology
thus affecting mood and performance. These studies suggest that foods directly
influencing brain neurotransmitter systems have the greatest effects on mood,
at least temporarily. In turn, mood can also influence our food choices and
expectations on the effects of certain foods can influence our perception.
Complex
Mood-Food Relationships
The relationship between food and
mood in individuals is complex and depends “on the time of day, the type and macronutrient
composition of food, the amount of food consumed, and the age and dietary
history of the subject.” In one study by Spring et al. (1983), 184 adults
either consumed a protein-rich or carbohydrate-rich meal. After two hours,
their mood and performance were assessed. The effects of the meal differed for
female and male subjects and for younger and older participants. For example,
females reported greater sleepiness after a carbohydrate meal whereas males
reported greater calmness. In addition, participants aged 40 years or older
showed impairments on a test of sustained selective attention after a
carbohydrate lunch. Furthermore, circadian rhythms influence our energy levels
and performance throughout the day. “Early birds” feel most productive the
first part of the day and their food choices become particularly important
during lunch and throughout the afternoon. “Night Owls” feel most energetic
later in the day and should pay attention to their breakfast choices as they
can increase or decrease energy levels and influence cognitive functioning. For
example, according to Michaud et al. (1991), if you are an evening person and
you skip breakfast, your cognitive performance might be impaired. A large
breakfast rich in protein, however, could improve your recall performance but
might impair your concentration. This illustrates the complexity of
relationships between food and mood and the need to find a healthy balance of
food choices.
Studies have found that diets low in
carbohydrates increased feelings of anger, depression, and tension and diets
high in protein and low in carbohydrates increased anger. Diets high in
carbohydrates have a generally uplifting effect on mood.
As much as food can affect our mood,
our mood can also affect our food choices. In a study by Macht (1999), female
and male participants were asked to report how their eating patterns changed
with emotions of anger, fear, sadness, and joy. When experiencing anger and
joy, participants experienced increased hunger as compared to feelings of fear
and sadness. Anger increased comfort and impulsive eating, and joy increased
eating for pleasure. Another study found that people eat more less-healthy comfort
foods when they are sad. Participants either watched a happy or a sad movie and
were provided with buttered popcorn or seedless grapes throughout the movie.
The group watching the upbeat movie consumed significantly more grapes and less
popcorn than the group watching the sad movie. In addition, when participants
were provided with nutritional information, the sad people consumed less
popcorn than the happy people and the happy people did not alter their
consumption.
Psychological effects of food
consumption
Cognitive factors are often more
powerful than physiological factors. For example, if a group of dieting
individuals is asked to eat foods high in calories, they might experience
anxiety and other negative emotions because they are afraid of gaining weight.
These effects have nothing to do with the ingredients of the foods themselves. In
addition, learned appetites can also influence our experience of foods. For
example, our favorite foods usually trigger positive emotions. Even the smell
of food can evoke a strong emotional experience. Furthermore, the situation in
which food is consumed and our past experience with particular foods also affects
our emotional response. For example, a person who thinks that drinking a cup of
coffee will increase alertness might feel more alert even after drinking
decaffeinated coffee.
Fat is
good for you
Omega-3 fatty acids can influence
mood, behavior and personality. Low blood levels of polyunsaturated omega-3
fatty acids are associated with depression, pessimism and impulsivity,
according to a study by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. In
addition, they can play a role in major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder,
schizophrenia, substance abuse and attention deficit disorder. In recent
decades, people in developed countries have consumed greater amounts of omega-6
polyunsaturated fatty acids, contained in foods such as eggs, poultry, baked
goods, whole-grain bread, nuts, and many oils, that outcompete omega-3
polyunsaturated fatty acids. Especially docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and
eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), both members of the omega-3 fatty acid family,
contribute to the fluidity of the cell membrane thereby playing an important
role in brain development and functioning. Omega-3 fatty acids are found in
fish, other seafood including algae and krill, some plants, meat, and nut oils.
Many foods such as bread, yogurt, orange juice, milk, and eggs are oftentimes
fortified with omega-3 fatty acids as well. Fish oil pills are sold as Omega-3
fatty acid supplements.
Sugar
is bad for you
According to the USDA, the average American
consumes anywhere between 150-170 pounds of refined sugars each year. That breaks down to more than 20 teaspoons of the
added white stuff per person per day. And our collective sweet tooth is
growing. For the past decade, Americans’ sugar consumption has edged upward at
the average rate of nearly 2 percent a year. Why the sugar
obsession? The vilification of fat may be partly to blame. During the low-fat
frenzy of the past couple of decades, oils were squeezed out of processed foods
– and sugar was pumped in to make reduced-fat foods tastier. It seems clear now
that we effectively traded one dietary evil for another. New research is
revealing disturbing links not just between sugar and obesity, but also between
sugar and inflammation. Inflammation, of course, has been implicated as a major
factor in a number of vitality zapping diseases, from cancer and diabetes to
atherosclerosis and digestive disorders. Whether you’re concerned with managing
your weight, your health, or both, it makes sense to evaluate the impact your
sugar habit could be having on your body.
On the spectrum of
dietary dangers, processed sugars are on a par with unhealthy fats.
“High-fructose corn syrup is the primary cause of obesity in our culture,” says
Elson Haas, MD, author of Staying Healthy with Nutrition (Celestial
Arts, 2006, New Edition). “Our bodies simply aren’t built to process all that
sugar.” Common sources of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) include: drinks
like juice, soda and processed coffee varieties like lattes and frappes, condiments
like ketchup and mayonnaise, breakfast cereals, yogurts and breads. Still,
to date, sugar doesn’t have nearly as bad a reputation as it probably deserves.
One of the reasons it slips under the radar is that connecting the dots between
sugar and disease requires widening the nutritional net to include
all refined carbohydrates (like processed
flours, cereals and sugars of all sorts). This may seem like a fine point, but
it’s an important distinction.
Most dietary sugars are simple carbohydrates,
meaning that they’re made up of one or two sugar molecules stuck together,
making them easy to pull apart and digest. Complex carbohydrates, like those found
in whole grains, legumes and many vegetables, are long chains of sugar
molecules that must be broken apart during digestion, therefore offering a
longer-lasting surge of energy. The presence of naturally occurring fiber,
protein and fat in many whole foods further slows the sugar-release process. The
more processed and refined the carbohydrate, as a rule, the faster it breaks
down in the digestive system, and the bigger the sugar rush it delivers. That’s
why refined flours, sugars and sugar syrups pose such a problem for our
systems. The body is exquisitely designed to handle small amounts of sugar. But
refined carbs deliver a larger rush than our bodies were designed to
accommodate, or even cope with. In ancient times, hunter-gatherers coveted the
occasional piece of fruit or slab of honeycomb as a rare treat and source of
rapid-fire energy for, well – hunting and gathering.
Today, sugar lurks behind most cellophane wrappers,
and the energy it provides is more likely to get socked away on our hips than burned
while stalking dinner. Being active goes a long way toward vanquishing excess
sugar in the bloodstream, but it doesn’t negate the need to watch your intake.
To make matters worse, unlike the fruit sugar (fructose) our ancestors savored,
today’s sugary treats are made with refined sugars (usually some derivative of
table sugar or high-fructose corn syrup), which can overwhelm the body’s
ability to balance blood sugar. A newly understood phenomenon, inflammation
underlies modern health scourges, from heart disease to obesity to diabetes.
“Sugar can play a role in inflammatory diseases,” says Dave Grotto, RD, a
spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association. “Poor regulation of glucose
and insulin is a breeding ground for inflammation.”
Under normal conditions, inflammation helps the
body rebound from injury. For instance, if you cut yourself shaving, white
blood cells race to the scene to mop up the wound, destroy bacteria and mend
tissue. But when the injury is deep inside the body, such as inside the blood
vessels of the heart, hidden inflammation can trigger chronic disease, and
experts are only beginning to understand how sugar fans the flames. The best
way to reduce unhealthy sugars in the diet is to consume fewer processed foods
and drinks in general, and refined carbs and sugars in particular. Fuel your
energy demands with a slower-burning balance of proteins, healthy fats and
whole-food carbs. For a healthier alternative to sugars that you add at the
table or kitchen counter, dietitian Grotto suggests switching to sweeteners
that are higher in naturally occurring fructose, such as agave syrup or malted
barley, which have a less dramatic effect on blood sugar and insulin. Still,
you should limit your intake to no more than 3 teaspoons a day. “These
sweeteners won’t elicit the glycemic response of table sugar,” he says, “but
you shouldn’t eat them by the gallon.” For sweetening tea or cereal, you might
also try stevia, a natural calorie-free herb made from a South American shrub.
It’s sold at health-food stores as a dietary supplement and is widely available
in both powder and liquid forms.
So where
do I go from here?
His
divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our
knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness (2 Peter 1:3). God
has given us everything we need in the earth and in His word to live an
abundantly blessed life. He has provided the bread of life for the health of
our spirit and body in Jesus Christ and He has provided the sustenance we need
for the health of our bodies in nature. When we make the right food choices we contribute
to the consecration of our personal temple of the Holy Spirit, we equip our
body to complete every good works and the Lord is able to use us to reach the
world without any hindrance or ailments in physical health. God cares about
every little detail of our life. I hope you realize after reading this blog
that your food choices do matter and even physical issues of life have
implications for the spiritual realm and our spirit man. Joshua told the
people, "Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the LORD will do amazing
things among you." (Joshua 3:5).
Stay
tuned for my next blog about how emotions and trauma from your past affects
your physical and spiritual health. Shalom!
For a more exhaustive
list of HFCS containing foods check out this website: http://www.celestialhealing.net/Food_contain_HFCS.htm
Citation: http://dujs.dartmouth.edu/2011/02/you-are-what-you-eat-how-food-affects-your-mood/#.VzKfDfkrLIU
