Nutrition and Mental Health Part 9 — Studies about diet and mental health correlation

Let’s learn about our food choices and how can we modulate our own brain responses. For this, we need to check the research made about diet and mental health, how we assess dietary patterns, and how to observe the relationship between what we eat and how we feel.

In order to research dietary patterns, most researchers used food frequency questionnaires (FFQ), to track what a person eats over a certain period of time. Those questionnaires are given to thousands of people belonging to one community, and this action is called a large population epidemiologic study. This way the researchers have the information necessary to check participants’ food habits and to identify if there is a connection between the food consumed and the measured healthy behaviors. This is an association or correlational study.

Food frequency questionnaires are very detailed, lasting up to one year, asking questions like how frequently do you eat broccoli and kiwi, or if you drink coffee three times a day, what do you put in it? Milk, sugar, sweetener, and how much? Do you eat avocado daily, weekly or monthly? Then the researchers work with the data provided to see if certain foods are grouped together. Does Sunday chicken roast get eaten together with roasted potatoes and Yorkshire pudding? People…