3.1 Food and mental health

Adolescents may develop anxieties around eating and body weight, as you saw in Session 3. If you can become well-informed about the characteristics of a balanced diet and understand that no single food source is a panacea for any particular problem, you can put yourself in a stronger position to help.

The UK National Health Service (NHS, 2018) highlights that in adolescence there is a particular need for certain vitamins and minerals:

• Iron (especially in girls)
• Calcium (Particularly for bone and teeth development)
• Vitamin D (to aid absorption of calcium into the body)

The NHS also emphasises the importance of eating breakfast, a range of fruits and vegetables (‘5 a day’) and cutting down on snacks that are high in fat, sugar or salt. A balanced diet is considered to comprise (NHS 2018b):

• at least 5 portions of a variety of fruit and vegetables every day
• meals based on higher fibre starchy foods like potatoes, bread, rice or pasta
• some dairy or dairy alternatives (such as soya drinks)
• some beans, pulses, fish, eggs, meat and other protein
• unsaturated oils and spreads, eaten in small amounts
• plenty of fluids [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] (at least 6 to 8 glasses a day)

Eating well can help to maintain physical health (which is good for the physical brain, of course), and there is mounting evidence that a balanced diet can support good mental health too (Adan et al., 2019). The missing piece is to do with being able to explain the science with certainty, and to predict with confidence how a change of eating habits will affect mental health. Consider the links between food and mood described in the next activity.