“Dr. Korn’s new book combines current nutrition science with practical wisdom about food choices that address depressed mood and anxiety at their root causes. There is no more urgent need in mental healthcare than sound nutritional advice. The Good Mood Kitchen will change the way mental health providers recommend food for health and healing, and is destined to become a classic.”
Revolutionize your personal cooking and eating habits for optimal energy, health, and emotional well-being. This book of mood-savvy tips, tools, and delicious recipes guides you step by step through all the essentials. It features dozens of easy-to-understand graphics, lists, and charts to help prioritize choices for maximum benefit.
Learn how to: Assess your unique digestive style and nutritional needs and develop the diet that’s right for you. Substitute problem foods, ingredients, and habits with healthy, delectable alternatives. Navigate gluten sensitivity and other allergies. Use smarter, healthier food preparation options for busy schedules. Identify common nutritional complications behind depression, anxiety, and other mood challenges. Engage family and friends in nutritional change. And much more.
This is the essential dietary road map for anyone interested in improved mental well-being. Explore tasty, life-changing ways to eat healthier—and happier!
“Dr. Korn’s new book combines current nutrition science with practical wisdom about food choices that address depressed mood and anxiety at their root causes. There is no more urgent need in mental healthcare than sound nutritional advice. The Good Mood Kitchen will change the way mental health providers recommend food for health and healing, and is destined to become a classic.”
“An easy-to-follow guide through the maze of modern day food options. . . . A helpful resource for learning how to make sensible lifestyle changes that include a nutritious diet and healthful eating habits to enhance wellness.”
“If food is medicine, what do we eat to heal? Beyond conventional nutrition dogma, Leslie Korn’s sophisticated, researched, and truly holistic perspective is urgently needed. There are few resources that I can confidently point to for life-changing support when it comes to healing mood and cognition. I couldn’t be more thrilled to add The Good Mood Kitchen to the top of my list.”
“Leslie Korn’s book is a wealth of information for ‘at home’ strategies to implement cleaner, healthier food choices. Food can be either medicine or toxin. Her approach aids in creating a family-friendly cooking environment with simple, clear lists to reduce toxic foods and retool the pantry. These changes support reduction of symptoms of depression, anxiety, ADHD, and cognitive impairment. The key is her personalized approach: finding the ‘right fuel for you!’ Sharing her wisdom in nutrition, spices, and foods, recipes are included throughout to strengthen the use of home cooking.”
I first wrote Nutrition Essentials for Mental Health, which was intended for clinicians. After it was published, I heard from so many enthusiastic therapists that they wanted a book they could give to their clients to use, or to their friends, that was not so heavily clinical. That became the inspiration along with always being excited to develop and test new recipes that are healthy while positively altering our mood.
That nutrition-in the form of both food and nutritional supplements-can improve mental health and that often mental illness is due in large part to chronic exposure to poor quality foods and the excitotoxins in them. The Good Mood Kitchen provides a map to sort through these questions of how food can harm, or how it can be medicine for the mind.
The new model of depression is inflammation, and poor quality foods cause this chronic low-level inflammation that can contribute to depression as well as pain. The first practical strategy is to increase the intake of anti-inflammatory foods. This includes the use of good quality fats like extra virgin olive oil, butter, or coconut oil, and the elimination of poor quality fats and oils.
There are a number of myths: one myth is that fat is bad for you. The other myth is that cholesterol is bad for you and this leads to poor advice, like avoiding avoid cholesterol-rich foods like eggs. Both these ideas are myths based on bad science. The brain is mostly fat and needs good fats to function. Eggs are just about as perfect a food as there is; rich in choline which supports brain chemistry and memory.
I have many clients who ask me this, and this is why I wrote this book. We don’t often have time to prepare elaborate meals. I provide lots of recipes that can be made in a slow cooker, where a whole meal can be prepared in just 15 minutes and then be ready 8 hours later after work or school. I also suggest that people spend just a few hours each week preparing food for the whole week, and give suggestions about how to do. I show how to make salad jars and brain boost salad dressing for the week.
I developed the brainbow concept for my clients to obtain their nutrients based on foods from all the colors of the rainbow. It is designed to support good mood and brain health. Rather than think about this vitamin or that nutrient, eating both raw and cooked foods from all the colors of the brainbow will help you reach your goal of a good mood. Also, the brainbow diet provides information about what foods are best eaten cooked and which should be raw. For example, spinach should always be organic and generally be eaten only cooked.
Achieving nutritional and emotional well-being takes some time, and people often are not convinced it will be worth the effort. But, the “proof is in the pudding” (a sugar fee pudding, of course!). Healing and staying healthy naturally takes more time, but it is also longer lasting. We are conditioned to the “quick fix” but most of these fixes-usually in the forms of drugs or medications-just suppress the symptoms. In the approach I offer, I address the nutritional and dietary causes of mental distress. The investment of a bit more time will last a lifetime.
Think of the kind of car that you drive: some cars take diesel fuel, others hum along on 97 octane, and some are high performance and need special additives.
We are all biologically unique, and if we put the wrong “fuel in our cars” (that is, our bodies), our engines will not work. Each of us will function best with specific types of foods and ratios of fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. Without knowing this and acting on it, we may feel OK but never great, or our mood may be very low, leaving us to wonder why. We are biochemical beings and nature understands this well, which is why there is so much diversity of foods and flavors around the globe. What is good for an Inuit in Greenland is not the same as what is good for an Ibo in Nigeria. We carry the genetic codes of our ancestors that inform what food is medicine for our brain, and what may be poison.
It’s hard to choose just 5, but here is a start. . .
Dark Chocolate (with no sugar)
Coconut Oil
Sweet potatoes
Eggs
Cherries
This is the essential dietary road map for anyone interested in improved mental well-being. An excellent complement to Nutrition Essentials for Mental Health, it can be used on your own or with a clinician. Explore tasty, life-changing ways to eat healthier—and happier!
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