I used to work in a wholefood shop ["Aha, that explains it" I can hear my readership thinking]. I did so out of conviction that good diet is well, good for us, and that good food should not be the preserve of the relatively wealthy. As I understood it, the difference between a wholefood and a health food shop was that the former were trying to work towards a situation where healthy food was affordable for the less well-off. Anyway, idealogical underpinnings aside, I am therefore not surprised to hear that the evidence has been stacking up that unhealthy or rather unwholesome eating has bad effects on mental health in at least some people. Hopefully this will further push policy towards social and economic policy that is about whole person wellness. There's also a dimension about recognising the externalities of 'industrial food', the question will be how best to make sure those costs are internalised to the industrial food producers? Including the costs of re-educating a whole generation who have lost the skills of knowing and preparing healthy food? It should be the food producers, and I suspect that if we can pull off the trick it will start to favour organic or near organic production and perhaps further greening of our cities.
the NHS bill for mental illness, at almost £100bn a year, will continue to rise unless the government focuses on diet and the brain in its food, farming, education and environment policies.
"Food can have an immediate and lasting effect on mental health and behaviour because of the way it affects the structure and function of the brain," Sustain's report says. Its chairman, Tim Lang, said: "Mental health has been completely neglected by those working on food policy. If we don't address it and change the way we farm and fish, we may lose the means to prevent much diet-related ill health."
SocietyGuardian.co.uk | Health | Rise in mental illness linked to unhealthy diets, say studies:
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