The human brain is made of food, so what we eat and drink affects our ability to keep a healthy, alert and active mind
We all intuitively appreciate that the foods we eat shape our thoughts, actions, emotions and behaviour. When you are feeling low, you reach for chocolate; when you are tired, you crave coffee. We all use food to soothe our moods and clear our heads without seeming to think much about it.
Yet the focus of most diets is on the way we look rather than the way we think. This is in part due to western society’s fascination with appearance, and medicine’s bias towards drugs and surgery. In fact, contemporary medicine often disregards the ways that our diet helps shape our cognitive health. Medical students are not trained in nutrition. And, for what it is worth, neither are scientists.
When I was a neuroscience student, I would marvel at how apparently simple substances such as sodium, potassium, magnesium and sugars determine whether our brain cells fire or not, grow or not, form new connections or wilt and die. It only became obvious in retrospect: the sodium, potassium, magnesium and sugars referenced were the same nutrients as in diet books or on food labels. To put it simply, the human brain is made of food.