Whole Foods & Our Moods

If you're feeling depressed, I suggest having a banana. If you came here looking for answers and you haven't eaten in the last four hours, please use the time you would finishing this post and dedicate it to a strawberry or something that you find super yummy.

It's hard to think when we're hungry; it's a part of the human condition.We require food to physically relax and without it, we are basket cases. Ever seen your uncle blow up at the staff at a restaurant because of a long wait? He was hungry.

We can pack pills full of all the nutrients in a week's worth of meals, but they cannot replace the food, and we will become hungry. Why ignore the hunger mechanism and give our bodies only part of what they need? Food is bioavailable; we can pack many nutrients into the foods we eat. They are meant to be processed by your stomach and small intestine, and passed on to your liver, where all the impurities are filtered and the vitamins sucked out and plugged into your system where they're needed.

Eating....

• subdues the hypothalamus (relieving it from having to secrete hunger hormones as well as manage the body's stress from its nutritional deficit)
• assimilates essential elements in order to relax muscles, potentiate energy and stabilize emotions
• stimulates the body into releasing powerful feel-good chemicals

 The brain is a great example of an organ that requires a good many exotic substances in order to release and receive its communications with the body. I'm not talking about the "Brain Food" that was marketed in the late 90's; all food is brain food, because the primary substance used by the brain is glucose. Most foods have substantial amounts of glucose, yet we often only provide our bodies with refined sugars, which are more difficult to assimilate than the simple sugars in fruits and vegetables. So how about that banana?