Universities, including ours, have an important role to play in promoting good mental health - we know that mental health hugely matters to our students and staff, and it matters to us.
Mental health is determined by a range of individual, interpersonal, community, environmental and structural factors. One of these contributing factors is healthy balanced nutrition.
For University Mental Health Day we hear from our experts about how healthy nutrition supports wellbeing and discuss some of the current nutrition-related research.
Join Dr Sue Force and Dr Nazanin Zand, Lecturers in Nutrition/Food Science, School of Science for the Mood and Food session for University Mental Health Day, as they explore the idea of a ‘balanced diet’ and how it is supposed to keep us holistically healthy.
The popular media is full of well-meaning, but often misinformed advice on what to eat for mental wellbeing. Whilst there may be truth in some of it, much is based on myth and legend, not to mention commercial gain. Living on goji berries is not going to keep you happy, in fact, it might make you ill if taken to extremes!
This session will help you to understand the systems approach to eating and that our mood is not separate from the rest of our body. We can think of our food as a ‘nutrition system’ and use it to improve our mental health with a holistic approach to eating. Sue and Nazanin will give you some new ways of looking at how you eat, and introduce you to the Dietary Inflammatory Index and some specific factors associated with mood.
You can join the Mood and Food session at 2.50pm on Wednesday 3 March via Teams here.
For more information visit our University Mental Health Day web page.
Further reading
Foods that Fight Inflammation – Harvard Health Publishing
A simple version of the Dietary Inflammatory Index
Firth Joseph, Gangwisch James E, Borsini Alessandra, Wootton Robyn E, Mayer Emeran A. Food and mood: how do diet and nutrition affect mental wellbeing? BMJ 2020; 369 :m2382
