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"Loneliness Is More Dangerous Than Smoking 15 Cigarettes A Day. Loneliness increases the risk of premature death by approximately 26%, which is comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day and more dangerous than obesity, lack of physical activity, and air pollution." - This is Fishers
Personal Annecdote
Upon hearing this statistic, my brain sparked to my great grandma. She lived alone for 30 years after her husband died, and the only thing keeping her from being lonely...were food and drinks. She prepared delicious lunches and dinners for the last 15 years of her life. Some family lore is that she had an iced cold beer and a cigarette every Sunday. Even if those weren't true, she was always one for flaunting her delicious food to the world. Her matzo ball soup recipe still is the best in the world. If food can bring that much joy to a person, so much so that they can live alone well into there tenth decade, to the point of counter acting loneliness; are our diets and restrictions that are self imposed and a struggle to manage, really helping us in the long run? People often forget about mental health, but thats not fair; My grandma may of been in and out of the hospital every week, but she always had a smile on our face. This was the start for the first of three main Project questions:
What is the link between dietary intake and mental wellness, and how is one's mental health impacted by consuming both unhealthy and untasty foods?
Instant gratification: the urge to satisfy a craving right away, without considering its long term effects or a bigger picture.
In the moment, it feels good to eat something that is unhealthy: processed. The glucose and sucrose in sugars and artificial flavorings provide a sudden surge in the dopamine receptors, which causes a euphoric reaction. Having dopamine is very important, but just like the flavorings in Coca-Cola, this dopamine is artificial. It's not real. Eating an unhealthy meal will make you feel like shit afterwards: tiredness, stomach cramps, and general dissatisfaction. Mental health is affected just as much: mood swings, depression, anxiety, and asshole tendencies come from eating processed and unhealthy foods. But it's not just unhealthy foods that cause this.
Unfortunately, even eating food you don't enjoy is equally bad for you. Having this food can cause digestive disorders. If you don't like broccoli at all, chances are your body doesn't either. There have been many scientific studies that suggest eating food you don't like will lead to you not getting the nutrients out of that food. These include Cleveland Clinic's food intolerance study and malabsorption studies. Malabsorption is when your body doesn't absorb your food, and this is a direct symptom of food intolerances. While this is rare, mentally, there are a plethora of negative attributes from eating food you don't enjoy. Eating food is a euphoric tendency for the majority of Americans. Meals are happy times where you can get your nutrients from eating things you enjoy. As nutritionist Terry Glassman said, "If mealtime becomes a chore, it just becomes another task in people's lives." Making diets and restrictions a chore causes stress, and stress should not occur for eating unless necessary. Eating healthy and committing to a diet is very damaging to people's ability to eat without stress, as these people have similar stress levels with food to allergy operators.
The best option is to eat healthy food that you enjoy, as your mental health will improve. Instant gratification may be the greatest façade in not just food history, but in the history of the world, and forcing yourself to eat can cause serious stress as well as food intolerance for a person. Diets that reflect these two (traditionally tasty + healthy) will be mentioned in the dieting, and processed food pages.
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