How to Eat for Better Mental Health with Dr. Drew Ramsey

self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Dr

Drew Ramsey, a psychiatrist, author, speaker, farmer and more. He's a clear voice in the mental health conversation and one of psychiatry's leading proponents of using nutritional interventions. Drew as an assistant clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Today, Jenny and Eric and Drew discuss his book Eat to Beat Depression and Anxiety Nourish Your Way to Better Mental Health in six weeks. Hello, Drew,

Welcome to the show. Hi there, Jenny and Eric, how are you both doing. It's great to be with you. It's great to be with you. We are really happy to have you on. We have both admired your work for a while and we're going to get into all of that in a moment. But we're gonna start like we always do with the pair of well and I'm gonna let Jenny take the parable, all right, let me

give it a go. So there was a grandparent talking with their grandchild and they said, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always a battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and one is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second and looks up at their grandparents and said, well, which

one wins? And the grandparents said, the one you feed so I'd love to know what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well.

Thank you for that, Jenny. I think that parable in a lot of ways is at the root of my work and what I do, which is helping human beings ascend and transform from where they often meet me, which is often a statemental crisis for struggling, whether that's something psychiatric depression or anxiety, or something that looks psychiatric but is often bigger than that, a notion of not feeling in touch with the self, not feeling in touch with that kind of higher echelon of our human power to

be creative, to be loving, to be kind. And all of us are battling with those two wolves, right, all of us feel how wonderful it is when people are kind to us, and we're kind and loving, and you know, and the good wolf, as they say in this parable, And then all of us also know the ferocious snarl of our aggression and our irritability and our fragility, and

how defensive we can all become. So the which you feed really is around and some ways to be the basics of mental health work, which is thinking and being mindful about where we put our time, energy and emotions. Right, if we are consumed with jealous thoughts, not that we just want to throw them away or aggressive thoughts, that we honor them as having deep meaning, but that is not the end for us, right that we are going

to continue to work that. Everybody listening right now, can you think about one that you have a lot of aggression towards whoever comes to your mind, right for whatever reason, he's dislike them, And how can you in any way imagine connecting with them around kindness. It's kind of hard sometimes. It's like, you know, it's easy to have gratitude for all of our blessings, which we should take a daily

accounting of that. You know, many of us have so many blessings that we don't sit with, you know, having gratitude for the hard stuff. It's much more challenging. So that's some of I guess what comes up for me in terms of this idea of what you feed, um, I think it also really applies to nutrition in a very concrete way. You make choices, and I think what the grandmother with the elder, what the ancient tradition tells us, is that if you are feeling powerless. You're probably right.

You're acting and behaving and in a stance that is powerless because you are not choosing the beasts that you're going to feed. And it's a very hard thing for all of us, especially when we're feeling depressed or anxious or powerless, to really be very clear that actually there are choices in our lives, from our food, our partners, to our sleep to our bedtime actually make a big difference for us whether we can be kind or loving

or not. Okay, So before diving into the heart of nutritional psychiatry and the epidemic we're in with mental health, I did just want to touch briefly on something you just said, and that that was having an element of mindfulness where our attention and our energy and our focus and our efforts and our choice where we are with that.

In fact, I was looking at I think it was a recent blog post you did around seven factors that can really make a difference when it comes to mood and depression, and one of those you list is mindfulness. I'm a certified mindfulness teacher and that's the realm of life that has been meaningful to me in my own practice and also in the work that I put out in the world. I'd love if you just spend a minute maybe talking a bit about the role of mindfulness

in that context. Well, thank you for that, Jenny, And hey, everybody who's listening, sorry for that super long first answer I gave. Mindfulness is a process that all of us can work on. It's like a muscle. It's an aspect of your brain. And like any of your mental health or cognitive functions, you know, one of the things that we always have to take a step back and realize

remind ourselves of is our capacity to work that. You know, just like if everybody in this room right here, this zoom room right wanted to learn another language, next year, we all could actually be fluent. Jenny and Eric, they could start running their entire business in another language if they really needed to, because the power of their human brain. So mindfulness is us utilizing the power to harness and focus our mind and all of our attention onto singular things.

We have to do that to get things done right. I can do a math equation and think about what I should get my kids for Christmas, and focus on my patient and the prescriptions, and do my list and females that right here to do one at a time, and so we think about exercises to help the mind focus. Oftentimes people talk about meditation, which about clearing the mind right.

Wanted to like really know that the mind is in a continuous flow and to try and stop that kind of slow it down or comment, I like active meditations or mindfulness work where we're drawing our focus on something. It's where I think people are often drawn. For example, if you play musical instrument right where you get pulled in or in you're playing and you get that feeling right where you're you're you're somewhere at their your fingertips and we're on your vocal cords and out and say

it's a wonderful spot, right, but you're very mindful. Or oftentimes when people exercise, or like when hunters go out and hunt right and you're sitting there in this really quiet zen spot right, there's a notion of mindfulness. Or I'm just looking over here at this cucumber. And one way to do mindfulness is like I could just eat this right now for lance, pop it in right, or I can really sit with it right, I can use all my senses, I can feel how cool it is.

Now I can see all the segmentations of the seeds. I can really be with this cucumber. You know. Actually we want to get on my reading glasses here because yeah, it's sort of incredible, right, everything that's right here, and and to spend really some moments about all the different

textures here. So to do that kind of exercise, right is then to settle things down, especially if you get a lot going on, and to use an exercise like this cucumber is more than just some hydration and a little nutrition, but it's something that can draw and focus my attention. It's one of the reasons I love being a therapist these days, got so much going on, But actually it's one of the last places where like, no, nobody's going to check their phone. Everyone's messages are off,

there's no interruption, there's nothing else, no emails. It's funny when you see at first you think, oh it's digital stuff. Great, like you see somebody and do a little note to write it. It's like, no, we all know the second. The second the full attention isn't on the person, right, And so it's wonderful in that way because it's kind of an act of mindfulness, of just constant attention. Yeah,

you're so right. I mean, and I think that that ability to really pay close attention is the beginning of when we can really cultivate appreciation and intention for the choices we make and what's there. So back to the realm of nutritional psychiatry. You talk about us being in a mental health epidemic right, a mental health crisis and rates of anxiety and depression really being steeply on the rise. Why do you think that is what is going on? Let's put us in this place. Well, one is that

we're more aware about mental health. We're talking about it more. And a lot of this because of this new book Eat to Be, Depression and Anxiety, where I was able to really look at at some of the modern statistics of what's going on in the past ten or twenty years.

Part of it is people are getting more help right now, twenty five percent of women in the last there's a survey from two thousand and two to I think two thousand and nineteen of what percentage of people were engaging in mental health care services, and it thinks about six of women now and eleven percent of men every year. So there's this big increase in interest in treatment, in

people wanting to address mental health. The other things that are going on prior to the COVID epidemic being on the edge of some sort of calamity world War wise, lots of politic well discord, and lots and lots of hatred in all of our feeds and all of our news broadcast. Right before all of that, we had a mental health crisis. The way is that usually gets defined is we're losing let's say, between like fifty to seventy

five thousand people to suicide a year. The statistic is is, you know, somewhere in the middle of that, But I just think a lot of people die by suicide that doesn't get reported that way. We lost over a hundred thousand people to death by overdose right The majority of

those are FENTANIL. So the idea that what used to be like going out having a little party, blowing a line right now is actually a group of you know, folks who aren't significant substance users but just to have a little party down there are all dead from FENTONIL to the point now, when I talk to people who have some substance use in their lives. You know, you've got to be really clear, like you've gotta have a Fentyl test kit that you cannot go out and think

about any thing sause you will die. It's really scary. So that's driving the epidemic. You know, there has been a real ongoing crisis in our mental health care system, right Clinicians like me, we are getting worked hard and there aren't enough of us. And even if you've got it great, I have a wonderful private practice. I've got an amazing clinicians to work with who support me. I mean, I'm really blessed. It's still a really hard job. I'm

sitting here with you all. I started my day at about four thirty am, so my first patients starting at five am, and I've been going since. And I love my work and i love seeing patients. But we're not talking about easy stuff, and so we have to increase capacity. We have to increase access, you know, some of us trying to do this. I have my E courses, you know, which is a way to try and access some of the knowledge we've gained about food and mental health. There's

a lot of ways to get supported mental health. One of my patients and we're trying to figure out kind of diagnostic clarity and said, you know, it really helped me because then I would know what support community is going to be most helpful to me. But in terms of, you know, the epidemic that you're talking about, part of it is as their physical health decline. Right as we struggle with diabetes, we struggle with obesity, and we struggle

with a lack of emotional awareness and engagement. Right the structures that used to give that to us in a society, whether that was our schools or our churches or our elders, that is just rapidly shifted. So people don't, you know, really know where to get mental health. And one of the big concerns we've had and started the work we've done most recently, is how do we help you build mental health like not being this thing like I'm not stay here and wait, like maybe I'll get depressed in

suicide on my fifties. That's what That's what happens to most doctors like me, to be honest, right, the number one profession at risk for suicide ors physicians, physicians and farmers. It's kind of goes back and forth. But yeah, so you don't want to sit around a waight for that, right, I'm sitting looking that Statistically, what what do I do in my forties? Right? How do I talk about that? How do you create a system where like, no, that

that is not going to happen to me. And so that's around what we call mental fitness and this idea that there are a lot of things driving the mental health epidemic. If you're somebody who's gotta mental health problems in some ways, none of that matters because you got it right. It's about now getting better. And if you don't have significant mental health symptoms right now, I think it should be on your radar. Everybody's worried about, like

heart disease and cancer. Like I don't mean to be like a jerk here, but like, okay, statistically everybody listening to this is going to die from vascular disease, heart disease, or cancer statistically or suicide. And so what mental health asks us to focus on is today. And that's where we're very different than other fields of medicine. You know, the idea that you're gonna die in seventy years, twenty years, thirty years, right, Like I want to talk about that,

But I want to think about today. I want to think about the relationships and the choices you make today and how that then can better insulate you and fuel your mental health and give you the tools that you need to really have a life. You're feeling very wonderful about. Tell us a little bit about how you were led into nutritional psychiatry, maybe what nutritional psychiatry is, and what led you to really focus so much of your life's

work in that particular area. Yeah. Sure, So nutritional psychiatry is looking at mental health through the lens of food. There are not a lot of us on the clinical side. They're just a couple of us in the United States. I've been really lucky to be early in the movement. I have defined nutritional psychiatry is the use of food. I guess nutrition, but I really buy that. I mean food, Like what's at the end of your fork to optimize brain health? Right, what should all of us be eating

to have super healthy brains? Because with healthier, happier brains, there's like less conflict, more love, there's better art, there's more laughter, all this stuff. I like like laughing, eating good stuff, hanging out, human smiling, you know, it's like good stuff when you feel it. Right. We all know that in the use of nutrition to prevent and treat mental health disorders, and that shouldn't be a controversial statement.

In two, I think a lot of times my field has been in a defensive stance because no one gives us legitimacy. I if you don't have a medicine to fix it in modern America, you're not legit right as a doc, if I don't have my silver boat, like of course you have depression. Eric, come on over here, young man, let me give you a bam. Don't you

feel amazing? Now? That's why ketamine has gotten so popular, right, it's the only thing, is the first thing ever where it's like, hey, I can make you feel better in an hour. Everything else in mental health is like I can make you feel better in like seven years, seven years a second there, probably like and probably that doesn't sound nearly is fun. So helping folks understand their choices

that influence mental health risk. And then no matter where you are, what diagnosis you have, you have a brain, you have neurons. They need certain nutrients, and a lot of people aren't getting those nutrients. If you're eating lots of processed foods. If you, you know, have a non joyful relationship with food is not nourishing, it's not pleasure,

it's at chore, it's calories. It sucks. Right, you have a huge opportunity, I would say, in terms of your mental health around nutritional psychiatry and how to think about like what that is and where's the kind loving, caring person towards the self and what's going on? Is it knowledge? Is it connection? Is it that you think brain food is gross? Eric's where it came from from me. I

grew up on a farm and really rural Indiana. I have kind of hippie foodie parents in a way, so we were always eating like organic stuff and and growing our own food. Then when I was younger in college in medical school, I became a little fat vegetarian and it was really like wanting to eat to be a super healthy guy. I was a college athlete, but also you know, young, like excitable, pre med and wanting to really live by healthy values and a healthy lifestyle. So

tried to dive for a while. I found a lot of fatigue and probably some depression on that that I personally experienced. Started adding in meat, and then seafood was a real challenge for me. But I started really challenging myself to eat seafood when I was a resident in New York and there you realized, like, you know, Manhattan's an island, there's a lot of great seafood there. And really had a lot of friends and chef friends kind of helped me like take little bites and and I

really learned a lot of seafood. But you know, nutritional psychiatry I think has evolved rapidly over the past few years because of all the data. Right that my first book, The Happiness Diet, came out in twenty eleven, I think probably it's the first really clear this is a nutritional psychiatry book. Eat Complete uh well last year, which is my my third book, is a cookbook. Um as soon as it's the first nutritional psychiatry cookbook that really says, hey,

this is for your brain. Health in the field then rapidly evolved. Right, twenty seventeen, the Smiles Trial comes out. Sixty seven people who have mental health disorders are treated, They're added on a Mediterranean diet. They get some counseling sessions about food, like what our health coach Emily Burner does in our clinic. It's like, hey, these are tips, these are ways and recipes and meal planes, whatever you need right to kind of get you on a more

traditional diet. They found thirty two point three percent of patients went into full remission. Most recently, the amend trial is like young men in Australia's depression. There seventy two of them in that trial. They just give them to nutritional counseling sessions, lot of encouragement. These effective trials they give young folks like olive oil, like here's your jug

of oil, Like go forth, young man, eat vegetables. And a hundred percent of these young men improved the Mediterranean dietary score the on average eight points at the fourteen point scale, so a big jump. But thirty six percent of that went to full remission of their depression. And I spoke with the researcher Jessica Bays. I've got a great interview up with her on our site. But it sort of say like, just like what did you do? Like every parent, every mom wants to know, Like we

encouraged olive oil dipping, good bread and olive oil. We encourage eating plants you like what plants I have left sery five favorite plants, great, eat more of those. And then beans and legumes that just the young men hadn't really been talked to about beans and the games and the one that really resonated with me as a guy interested in maile mental health. She said, the young men felt seen. They said, nobody really seemed to care about

their depression. Nobody really seemed to be checking in with them. And it really meant a lot that she was asking them and telling them about stuff they could do and identifying things and choices in their life where maybe contributing the oppression. So bo, that's a long answer, Eric about why nutritional psychiatry it was more fun and also tasty. I found that, like, you know, there's a way that when I talked about food with patients, it was like,

clear everybody likes food. Right, you talked to me about pesto, It's clear I like it. You know, you tell me a few of your favorite things. All a sudden, we're

like having a little different vibe. And I think along with all that serious stuff that I always want to talk about with my patients and love talking about, you know, I also want it to be there's some moments that we both really enjoy, you know, where where we can both be humans who love some aspect of food or struggling with some active spect of food, or dammit, want another piece of cake, you know, and we can be talking about that and kind of working through that in

some way. I could talk about olive oil all day long. I mean, I just have grown to love it and appreciate it and it's health benefits, but then also it makes things delicious. I think it's one of those foods that's so wonderful forest because of the accessibility and also

the simplicity. If everybody listening, you open up your cabinet, if you see you know, canola oil and sunflour oil and corn oil and so you know, I'd say, like, you know, one easy nutritional psychiatry move is you should get rid of all of those and get yourself a nice fresh jug of olive oil, but I don't know, a quarter or so, and get rid of it in the next week, you know, by pouring it on vegetables, by sting you know, vegees in it, by oven roasting them,

by cooking your eggs, and right that, just use olive oil as a primary fat. Focus on that and getting more seafood in your diet, you really in some ways have fixed the major cultural shifts that have changed how we eat in terms of fatty acid consumption. I've started sending a couple of text messages after each podcast listener with positive reminders about what's discussed and invitations to apply

the wisdom to your life. It's free, and listeners have told me that these texts really helped to pull them out of autopilot and reconnect them with what's important. When you get a text for me during your day to day life, it's one more thing that helps you further bridge that gap between what you know and what you do. Positive messages when you need them for me to you. So if you'd like to hear from me a few times a week via text, go to one you feed

dot net slash text and sign up for free. One of the things you say, I love this line is that your brain health starts at the end of your fork, which is such a great short phrase that makes a really big point that that choice you know it is really the beginning of supporting your brain health. I wonder if in your field you run into very often whether it's from peers or you know, the public at large, but just the challenges around studying the health benefits of

foods in a longitudinal, well controlled way. You know, you talk about nutritional psychiatry as an evidence based approach. I wonder though, with those challenges, I think of really making the trials well controlled enough based on all the many variables at play at people's lives and trying to isolate for specific food as having a role that has impact

in reducing risk of disease, you know, etcetera. How do you attribute in the research, like how do you address that concern or how do you attribute the consumption or avoidance of specific foods too specific mental health outcomes? Do you see that as evidence that's pretty clear or evidence that could be stronger. I think evidence can always be stronger because it's science. So I think we should definitely

go down the side of more science. Think anybody who's listening has lots of money, you should donate that to nutritional psychiatry research or mental health for third, right, because when I have evidence and I can look a patient the eye and say hey, X percentage of patients get better.

Right on whether it's a medicine or psychotherapy, or I can say, hey, a hundred and fifty two people were in this trial with severe depression, and three months later, the majority of them were feeling much better when they adopted the Mediterranean style diet. Right, that's really helpful. You're alluding to the fact that research is hard to do

in mental health. Right. We have formal rating scales, which if if you've ever filled one out, you know you're going, wow today, I'm feeling all right, Thank goodness for doing the rating scale if we did it yesterday. Food frequency questionnaires usually don't work. I can ask you, hey, what

you eat last week, it's not super accurate. These studies tend to use widgets what they call them in Australia or apps, by which you're going to get a prompt and you're going to record a lot of what you eat, and you know, now we can do more of that or take pictures of what you're eating. You also can't

double blind food. Right. If I'm gonna do an experiment with Eric and Jenny, I'm gonna give them the same bill, and one of them is getting some wild antidepressant that we're trialing, and the other one is getting a sugar pill if we give it to a hundred people who get a sense right of a randomized controlled trial. With food, you know that I'm feeding you salmon and Brussels sprouts, and also, as I often mentioned in my talks, you know, it's not just the nutrients in the brain foods. I

really want you eating it in a joyful context. You know. I want you to look around the table, I want you to take a deep breath. I want you to chew your food. Ideally, I'd like you to think about a time regularly where you can cook for others. I think you should go to your farmer's marketing, And I think there's a lot of ways you can kind of flex and build mental health using nutrition as a kind of vehicle for that. There are other patterns like keto.

Is keto good for mental health? So you can like sure, there's like a yearlong trial of keto, and it's like, you know, it's definitely like doesn't matter to go gluten free. Well, yeah, if you have gluten sensitivity, right, if you have irritable bowel syndrome and you simplify your diet, yeah, it's gonna

be great for your mental health. Over there's huge reduction in an anxiety among patients with balle issues when they get that kind of sorted out with diet, goes from about seventy of the population back down to normal about like the population. So and then I would also say, you know, there's also this the farm boy in me. I'm like, folks, we do not need any more studies or science about how to treat depression. The first steps should be super obvious and clear to all of us.

Everyone listening knows what they are. Everyone listening knows the things you're doing in your life. You're not taking care of your mental health. We all do it. Yes, there are lots of mysteries to the human brain. Yes we want better treatments. But it's not like when I meet patients, I'm like, wow, what a mystery of how to help

you get better? You know, sometime it takes a little while, probably takes as the therapist he sitting and listen to people who tell you all the ways that they know that and then they say, you know, I don't know. It's like with all my face and I'm like, okay, it just like we gotta hit rewind. You just tell

me all the things you know. You know a lot like maybe you don't know exactly what to do with it next, but actually it does sound like you do, you know, And so I would just say that the point being, yes, mental health is complex, but when it comes to the research about mental health, right, what is the most powerful antidepressant out there that everybody can do?

Movement and exercise right? Doesn't mean everyone's doing it, you know, like can a third of people with chronic depression probably improve with a more traditional style diet if you're eating lots of garbage? Probably right? But you know, what we really hoped in our clinic is to start providing people, you know, tools and encouragement and community around. Hey, a lot of silver bullet, but it's definitely going to help

a lot of folks. Let's start getting food right, Let's start getting movement right, Let's start building mental fitness and

talking about it in our everyday lives. So, yeah, I think you just said something there that's important, which is the silver bullet aspect, right, Because a lot of times when nutrition and holistic therapies are served up, they're served up as just eat kale and all your problems will go away, right, And I love that your work is not oriented in that way, and and it says, look, nutrition is an important part of overall mental health, it's

not the whole game. And I'm kind of curious, how do you think about when you're working with the patient, what levers to pull, you know, knowing that we have a variety of levers, right, we have talk, therapy, we have medication, we have nutrition, we have movement. I'm going to add a part B to that question, which is, with something like depression, one of the hardest things is that the very things that are best for depression often take a lot of energy, and energy is what we

often don't have when we're depressed. So how do you also work through that conundrum with your patients? Start with me personally, you know. How to thing from me when I'm starting with depression is that the motivation to do things doesn't seem so clear because nothing really feels very good, you know, So I don't real think, you know. So it's like I don't want to go get a latte or go talk to a friends, like I'm not enjoying it.

I'm not enjoying what I'm like. The future is not seeming like good and bright, and especially for folks in middle age. I think what least sucks about depression is you're looking and you're kind of feeling like, damn all this effort, And is that how I feel like it? Like, yeah, it's like I mean, especially parents in COVID, when you were doing the whole like managing above and managing below where you know you're additioning up dinners for kids for

aging parents. I mean, it's a tough thing and it's hard to feel good often, and so I think you're really right. I would say that the ways Eric, that I've always worked for me personally and I find work for my patients is one when there's partnership with people. When you're alone struggling with any of this stuff, boy, it sucks worse when you're with somebody, a friend who isn't going to patronize, using gonna judge you, but it's gonna knock on the door and be like let's go.

Let's go here, depressed, let's go, like come on, let's go for a walk, sunny outside, let's go. Maybe doesn't even talk, but something like that, or I don't know, you know, when I'm not doing I'll talk to a few friends who also are colleagues, and you know there's good about those text and how's it going? You know, like, what are you doing? You do you started that thing, yet you're still moaning like or whatever. Right, So you want to share things with people. You want to use

groups to motivate you. Right, when you've got somebody who's depending on you're just that much more likely to go. Also, that's then somebody you can help. Maybe you go knock on their door tomorrow all of a sudden, you're giving. That always feels good. That's always good for depression because when you're going after yourself and being all nastiest people tend to do in depression, you can kind of fat back and be like, no, you went knocked on door,

like you asked them a question, you did something. I think the other part, Eric is people make it too complicated. Like when I say brain food, people are like, oh, like nineteen superfood, soft dog, sauteid not steamed, right, don't steam it? You boil it only a D eighteen degree right with you got to put the black pepper on there to like get the list with that out of it and make sure right it's like ah right, And then all of the misinformation right, the misinformation about oxalates,

it's getting spread out there. There's just disgusting, right, this idea that like eating kale is gonna cause all kinds of like pains and I it's just like kale is actually the definition of a low oxide like green, just to tell people have bad The misinformation is Lectin's total garbage, misinformation campaign, total bullshit, like literally horseshit. Sorry to be so blunt. And you see people like, oh wait, maybe maybe it's the lentils that's causing It's like, no, no,

it's not. It's the processed food. It's the sugar, it's the lack of sleep, it's the not moving or loving enough that's the problem. It's not that you're eating freaking black beans occasionally. It's so I would say, you're gonna part of it's where people have you gotten pulled into, indoctrinated into this cult of misinformation about nutrition, wellness and food and they think it's a mysterious thing that someone else has figured out and it's not. Everything you need

is writ in your local grocery store. Everything you need is at the end of your fork. In terms of food, you can be very very powerful eater going to Walmart, I I have. I grew up in really really rural Indiana. Walmart is the closest grocery store to me or the I g A. There's not a big organic food section, but there's everything you need. There's wild salmon, there's anchovies, there's yeah, I'm getting hung it's snoki. There's broccoli, there's all the good So there's kale. So yeah, I recently

learned to love can sardines. Oh how did you do that? Yeah? I know, I haven't been to Portugal yet, so I'm looking forward to that. Share with everybody how you like starting this because this is a great example. Also, Eric your notice like it's complicated, costs us like no not, it's about like everybody listening, just like, let's be straight up honest. Do you have a good sardine game? Do you have a good tinned fish game? Startine game? My

sardine game is strong. Let's hear it. Let's hear it, Jenny, help us for sardine deficient people. Yes, well, I'll tell you what and you can probably fill in some of the blanks here. But I just over and over kept reading about how good they are for your brain, Like there are these tiny little fish that packed this huge beneficial punch. There are a great source of protein and

you know O mega threes. And so I finally was like, you know what, I was going to a retreat where I knew they were going to serve just plant based meals, and I thought, um, this is like a plant based retreat hack, right, Like bring like the tin fish with you, yes, And I was like, I'm gonna bring some protein. So I brought the sardines, and I mean I was like, I opened them, like I'm gonna hate this. I'm gonna hate these. You know, these are tiny, little fishy and

they're gonna be fishy anyway. So I tasted one and to me, I was like, you know what, this taste a lot like cantuna. Like that if you like cantuna, Sardines are not an offensively fishy food. Even get them like filet and with no skin on them. So then it's just the easiest thing to eat and could not be better for you. Yeah. The reason that topping are you're getting your complete protein. They are the original best source of wanting to make it three fats, I mean,

they eat this algae and bio concentrated forest. But the smaller, tinier fish, I'm not gonna have to worry about mercury and and as much kind of of the stuff that tends to concern people. A fish right polluting some mercury. Small fish don't worry about that. Lots and lots of them. Maga three fats be twelve. Actually, those small fish, especially for women who are listening, are amazing because they're one

of the top calcium foods. Because you eat these little small bones and they're inexpensive, you don't have to worry about them spoiling. Jenny's maybe got a little better palette than I. Don't eat a ton of tuner or a ton of sardines out again, I gotta cook them up a little bit. And with sardines, I make this nioki Ella Glenda, which I named after the Aspen Brain Institute founder Glenda Greenwald. I was about to make her anchovies, and she's like, I don't like anchovies. I was like, like,

I like sardines. I was like, quick, run to the pantry. It's that guy was the middle of the pandemic. I was like stocked up. I was like, I have no idea what I'm gonna do with all this stuff. But I eventually figured out. But if you just like you know, garlic olive oil, like some a reagano fresh regana ideally legal tomato paste, some pine nuts, and just put in some sardine, kind of mash them in there to low heat a little tomato paste, drop it over some yoki ears.

It's really really o mommy, not fishy at all. Be a good sardine game and just tin fish game. I think it's just one of those ways again people look to fish oils, they look at that silver bullet, right, And that's not what this is about. It's about eating a dietary pattern and living a lifestyle that supports your mental health. It means refusing to live under the tyranny of too busy. It means refusing to live under the tyranny that food is going to be super efficient, super

cheap and last forever. Those are false ideals that are going to destroy your mental health. And you know that's about the mental health epidemic. I think in part it's just that we right now do not have a culture that values mental health. Right. We're starting to get concerned about it, but it's it's not like we engage with one another as like, you know, the most powerful thing we can do as a country is support one another's

mental health. The most powerful thing I can do after voting right is to go and be kind to the person who left of me into the right of me in most situations, and to support them along with awareness and the need for more treatment. I just think there's also that part that we all have to do that, like, Okay, do we have a mentally healthy society right now? Well, how are we all contributing to that? It's all of

our faults. I would be remiss if I did not bring up our editor Chris's shardine game does sardine game too? He does. He cracks them right open in the can, dumps some mustard in, and just eats him out with a fork. So Chris is an a player when it comes to sardines. So I think Drew your croach sounds much better to me. Yeah, I got gold. I hope somebody will be one of those guys like when I'm old and you find me on the mountaintop out here in Jackson and be like, oh I see Duc Ramsey

over there, and be like hello. Everyone's like but I'm not there yet. I need like to cook them. I'm on the mountaintop. I just can't eat sardines yet. The one I've been eating the Patagonia, and I don't want any affiliation other I'm a big fan. And Yvonne lives in Jackson, and it's a generous is his family and he have been I think to shout out. But the Patagonia Provisions has some amazing, amazing preserved fish and tins

of fish. My wife, like the Grand Titan, climbed it with some friends with the X some guides and they brought along this. You know, it's amazing wild salmon up there. And so one of the things that's wonderful for eaters today, and I hope everybody feels a little encouraged, is the access that you have. I mean, and I say this as someone who grew up in a food desert, right I'm not from a place where there's fancy grocery stores.

There is so much choice and even now, I mean, food is so expensive right now, the inflation is ridiculous. But even within the food inflation, there's still so many great deals and great choices that everyone has available to them.

And if you're struggling with that everything that's total, you know, bologna of the statement, we've got a resource brain food on a budget at least to help support that idea and kind of give folks at least some ideas around how a reasonable budget can really put together a great brain food. Chen, you used a phrase just a minute ago I thought we could go into, and it was nutritional patterns. Can you talk a little bit about what a nutritional pattern is and how that can make this

type of eating easier for us? Yeah, a nutritional pattern. We call it a dietary pattern. So when people say the Mediterranean diet, you know, if you were on from rural America, Midwest, that means like Italian food, that means pizza hut, right, pizza and pasta. And then you know Greek food that means like a hero. So Mediterranean diet is a dietary pattern. It's dietary pattern that have processed grains, they have whole grains, right, They have more seafood and

fermented foods. They have more plants, they have more small fish. So if you think about the month your dietary pattern, I usually do it in weak chunks and in each beat depression and anxiety. There's a six week plan in the back that each week we go through a food category to really increase what's called the nutrient density of

your dietary pattern. Means, when you're eating according to brain food rules or dr drew rams these ideas about food, you're seeking out foods that has more nutrients per calorie. So it's where when you're drinking a soda, you're getting a hundred and forty calories and you're not really getting any nutrients. Are getting a little phosphorus when you're eating a small kale salad or you know, believing the misinformation about kale, So you're on whatever your box choil or

rugle of salad. Right about thirty calories per cup. Let's give you three cups and a little olive oil like drizzle it over there, some lemon juice and little salts. About a hundred and forty calories right there. Just think about all the nutrition I just gave you. Right, you're getting like more than a thousand percent of your daily need of vitamin K, a fast soluble nutrient that probably

takes care of the brain and ways. We're just starting to understand, you're getting like eight of your daily vitamin A. You're getting probably two or three daily need of vitamin C. You're getting fiber, you're getting fully, you're getting vetter nutrients, you're getting magnesium. You're getting all this stuff for the same amount of calories as the cokered. So that's nutrient density.

So we're looking for a dietary pattern and we construct that out of these very nutrient dense food categories, leafy greens, rainbow vegetables, the small fish. We were just talking about nuts, beans and seeds, right, like almonds incredible snack. While nuts, we look at things like fermented foods right where it's not gonna be nutrient dense, it's going to be dense with live bacteria. And so we're going to overtime foster

a vary what's called diverse microbiome. Right, all these organisms that live on our gup, but we're gonna have like a whole bunch of different species. There's a lot of correlations betwe ween our microbiome diversity and health and the risk of depression, for example. So that's I hope explains like a dietary pattern. We haven't mentioned eggs, meat, dairy, These all can be part of your dietary pattern. I think some people argued should be part of your dietary pattern. Um.

A lot of times those foods get vilified. But you know, if you're struggling, Let's say you're looking for to feed a family of four and you have five bucks for your protein, you know, a pound of ground beef is pretty incredible because kids love it. You can do a million different things with it, and it costs a few dollars. You know, I appreciate all the concerns about conventional meat.

I also really think there's a food justice argument that we you know, oftentimes we're talking to folks who and engaging with people who are struggling with their food security. I have works at the food bank here, and you know, one of the major populations that head to food banks are our teachers because we don't pay them enough, you know. So I just think we want to consider how to

improve dietary pattern and how to improve nutrient density. I think, you know, one one aspect of that is, you know, as it's kind of keeping it simple and focusing on the food that really make a big impact. Yeah, I'm not really sure why this particular thing kind of made it click for me in my brain in terms of

the actual importance of it. But I can remember hearing that are learning that selenium, I'm going to twit your antidepressant food scale, right, So, so selennium being a I'm not sure precursor is the right word, but like at least building block for serotonin in our bodies and brains and so our diets maybe not naturally rich in selennium, I mean at least especially if it's a processed food diet. But you can have what to brazil nuts and get

all the selenium you need for the day. So I thought to myself, like, well, how am I expecting my body to make enough serotonin for me if I'm not giving it the materials it needs in order to make that serotonin. So like, of course I need to be supporting my brain health with what's at the end of

my fork. You know, it's impossible to ask your body to do something it doesn't have the material to do, you know, So if you could talk a little bit about that that antidepressant food scale, is selenium is on that list you know of of things that we need to think about for patients specifically even with depression. Yeah, some people are struging with depressure and just their mental

health in general, you know. And we got into this space early, let's say, like two thousand and eight, and began thinking, okay, everyone just says blueberry, right, they're like wild salmon. Like what our brain foods? And why? We all know omega threees are important for mental health and so its B twelve, but like, what are the foods

that our actual brain foods and why? And so we asked the scientific literature and we was myself and Dr Laura le Chants and then uh Samantha al Creef also helped out in our office and the Brain Food Clinic, And this is an open source paper called Antidepressant Foods, but the Antidepressent food Scale was the sort of centerpiece of the paper, and we just said, hey, what nutrients have evidence that they can prevent and treat clinical depression.

So magnesium, for example, if you look at a population that doesn't have match magnesium intake, or you look at people are magnesium deficient, they get depressed more. And when you look at people who take magnesium they have an antidepressant, more people get better from depression. So magnesiums on the list.

So there are twelve nutrients, things like selenium when maga three fats be twelve, iron, zinc, and vitamin A. And we just ask, you know, what foods have the most of these pre calorie and we listed both plants and animals. It was a way of creating a sense of what are the food categories we should focus on, and you realize that's really, you know what oftentimes people are missing. Most Americans are struggling. Ninety percent of Americans don't eat

enough plants every days, vegetables. Right, the average intake of seafood in America is like less than twelve pounds a year compared to like a hundred and twenty thirty pounds of sugar per year. So there's a lot of room for everybody to really, you know, do a little bit to get more of these foods, more of these nutrients. So the big food categories that was on the ntidrepresent food scale where leafy greens, herbs, more fresh herbs, more

leafy greens, more rainbow vegetables, more cruciferous vegetables. And on the animal side of things, where bivalves, muscles, slams, and oysters. If you muscles, like the last time you made them at home. I never had super romantic and easy and delicious, so romantic, babe. Let me tell you. I maybe this is admitting my ignorance, but I have not heard the word bi valve until you, and so I don't know,

I don't know. Thank you for that, because now I have been intentional about including bi valves your intentional bible of either. I love that too. There's so but it's so interesting, Like to me, one of the fun things about seafood is all the exploration of all of the foods, all of the different cultures and how they engage with seafood.

I also think, you know, there's a lot of concern about our seas and about the overfishing, and I find being a seafood eater now I like that I'm involved in that, not just in the consumption, but in putting my food dollars towards maybe some systems that are trying to do it better and preserve it. And so it's where you know, mostly buying wild seafood, if I'm going to buy a pharmacy food, really focusing on being really specific.

There are only a few kind of situations where that makes sense, like muscles, for example, makes a lot of sense because they're almost all farmed. But you know, there's ropes that they drop into these bays, so that's kind of, I don't know, pretty minimal as opposed to you know, a fish that instead of letting eat seaweed, you're feeding corn to, which is I don't know, kind of the root of the problem anyway. Yeah, Now I love muscles and clams, and because of you, I also ventured out

while in Portugal on this trip to try oysters. I thought it was going to be unpleasant. They were delicious. They were delicious, and then especially the smaller they are for me anyway, even they just tasted like the ocean in your mouth. I'm the same way, and the small ones is a secret for me sometimes Indiana, like when I went and became a New Yorker and then came back to Indiana, ordered oysters and they came out with like those Midwest like it was, you know, it was

like a like a ham. I was like jeesus, you know. And some people like them big like that no offense if you do right, But I like those little smalls where you just can slam them back and they do taste like the sea and you know. Also, lots of people tell me I'm not quite there yet, but all kinds of like canned and tinned oysters right where you can cook them up, put them on tacos, and me it's all kinds of interesting ways traditional American food too.

If you look back at traditional American cookbooks, are these recipes for like hundred oyster stews. And it's really, you know, one of the reasons our country was famous initially. It was just the plethora of seafood and bi valves that were on our shores and something for us to aspire to return to. My bivalve game is weak, No, well it we should say it's non existent, but I'm gonna

work on it. I would say it's evolving. I think we should say your bivalve games about you've got I mean, you're married to uh, you know, it looks like a beautiful bivalve enthusiast. It's really the first thing most men need to improve their bivalve game. I would say, so, I have hopes for you, sir, the I think this treatment, I have high hopes for this treatment. I just want to say, I think so, yeah, let's just have a growth mindset around that. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, postive on goalie.

That's all. I'm in a lot of garlic, a lot of person and fish taco. That's not a bi valve, but I just think that it helps with more seafood palatability and kind of combo of the salsa and the cabbage and the fish just kind of helps me with my bi valve game somehow. Good luck, I can talk to you about this all day. This is the most fun, but we realized that, uh, you know, we don't have

all day. So before we wrap up, I know you've got a new online of course about depending on when this podcast here is about to come out or just come out, called Healing the Modern Brain just come out. Thank you so much, Jenny. I really appreciate that. Everybody, if you want to check it out. Starts. It's a freemaster class actually called mental Health Breakthroughs. I just found

in our clinic. We keep kind of meeting people who don't have some of these new evidence based concepts about mental health, like inflammation and the microbiome kind of at their fingertips in terms of how they're thinking about their mental health. And then also these nine breakthroughs that have come out recently, so you can check that Out's all

on my site Drew Ramsey MD dot com. And then yeah, there's a new course Healing the Modern Brain that you'll see through there, which sort of our biggest effort to date in terms of trying to really help people feel a lot of encouragement and a lot of resources are on improving their mental fitness. And then, um, you know, if everybody want to please check out Eat to Be Depression and Anxiety. It's filled with all these wonderful illustrations by German graduate student who we met on Instagram and

I loved Quasians. So it's actually out in Spanish now as well, So please check out the books if if you're interested. But mostly I just thank you for this conversation. I grew up in Crawford County where we were the wolf pack, and so on our wall it says the strength of the wolf is the pack, and the strength

of the pack of the wolf is wolf. So I appreciate your parable to start us out, and I hope everybody feels some encouragement and hopefulness around how to feed your mental health that is not making every bite perfect, but that you really can make better choices they can fit in anybody's budget. There's a lot of resources and there's a great I think community around eating for mental health and feeding your mental health. So thank you Eric and Journey for this great conversation and uh I look

forward to seeing you all down the road. Thank you so much, and we'll links in the show notes to all the things you just mentioned. And again, thank you. I appreciate it. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community. With this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now. We are so grateful for the members

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