how to go on a japanese diet



for about ten years we've had very strongcorrelational data showing that, for example, when you eat poorly your risk of depressionand illnesses like depression just go up 70/80 percent. and when you eat a more traditional diet likea mediterranean diet or japanese diet your risk of an illness like depression can godown by as much as 50 percent. and so that's now led to the first clinicaltrial that is just being reported showing that a mediterranean diet augmented with somered meat actually can treat clinical depression, major depression disorder. and it's a very exciting moment for nutritionalpsychiatry.

it's a time when we have more science thattells us food should really be part of the conversation when it comes to our mental health. we are facing an incredible mental healthacademic. i've been in new york as a psychiatrist nowfor 16 years and the amount of distress and the amount of mortality that we're seeingis like levels we've never seen before and we need as many tools in our toolbox and foodis very much there, both from just common sense. we all know that to feel right we need toeat right, but then also backed up by now an incredible amount of science showing thata core set of nutrients actually have very

clear data that can help in the preventionand the treatment of illnesses, again, like depression and dementia. so we want to encourage people to eat thosefoods that have most of these nutrients and then help them do that is really part of amental health care plan. we think about a lot of illnesses when weeat, heart disease, cancer, diabetes and it's always struck me that really the illness youshould be worried about or the organ you should be worried about when you're eating is yourbrain because that is by far your biggest asset. it consumes more of your energy in your foodthan any other organ you have.

and so focusing on the nutrients your brainneeds guide you to a slightly different set of foods that if you focus on just thingslike calories or saturated fat or preventing something like cancer. and so it's an exciting moment as the databegins to catch up with common sense. the diets that seem to do the best in termsof brain health are traditional diets. so, for example, the most science is aboutthe mediterranean diet. mediterranean diet is a plant-based diet. you're going to see lots and lots of nutsand seeds, whole grains, you're going to see seafood, you going to see meat and dairy treateddifferently.

i mean it's interesting that all mediterraneandiets, greek yogurt, for example, they have some dairy and fermented dairy products andmeat, but they're used more as flavorings. you don't see what we see in a western dietof a giant steak and a baked potato. you see a lot more spices in the mediterraneandiet and fresh herbs, these are very, very powerful medicine that have always been usedto treat illness. and so one of my favorite interventions ishelping people do like even a little herb pot on their fire is scape or in their frontyard because you can just walk out in the morning, grab some chives, grab some basil,chop it up, have it with yours scrambled eggs. you've just increased the nutrient densityof that meal and you've made it a little bit

more like the mediterranean diet. what you're going to see is in the mediterraneandiets mainly monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. you're going to see, again, a lot of crunchyvegetables, a lot of rainbows on those plates and lots and lots of seafood.

how to go on a japanese diet,i mean that's really one of the main differencesif you look at a spanish diet, all those tapas with little anchovies and a little bit ofsquid and a little bit of octopus where we're getting these very, very nutrient dense seafoodsthat, again, we know how these molecules that are so important for brain health.