Moody eating, gut microbes, and COVID

In COVID-19 and Food Science, Featured Posts, Functional Foods and Health by Prof Edward

It’s not often that as many as three separate Contemporary Issues topics converge into a single study. Yet, researchers as Case Western University in Ohio suggested that COVID-induced depression may have been exacerbated by unhealthy diets high in sugars and fats.

In this review, published in Frontiers in Nutrition, the authors propose that depression and poor eating habits (both common during the pandemic) affect the gut microbiome for the worse. The so-called wrong microbes are enriched when people eat poor diets, and those microbes produce chemicals that act as neurotransmitters that affect the brain.

However, they also contend that foods and lifestyle changes can restore a heathy gut and reduce depression.

Thus, the effect of the diet on mood (topic #1), COVID (topic #2), and food and gut microbiome (topic #3), are all together in one study.

These are connections to which many us can probably relate. What do you think?

 

Image from: www.discovermagazine.com