Tyler G. Graham - The Happiness Diet: A Nutritional Prescription for a Sharp Brain, Balanced Mood, and Lean, Energized Body

This book is dedicated to Americas farmers.

First wed like to thank Rodale for all the support theyve given to this project. We especially appreciate Julie Wills and Karen Rinaldis votes of confidence in us in the middle of a recession. Wed also like to thank Gena Smith and Zachary Greenwald for their many late nights, as well as Colin Dickerman and Pam Krauss for helping us to the finish line. Emily Weber and Yelena Nesbit, we appreciate your wise counsel. Heather Jackson, you are a book publishing sage. Joy Tutela, you are a patient, patient woman. Thank you so much for going above and beyond.

Tyler would like to start by thanking his mother, who made sure that most nights the Graham family sat down together for a home-cooked meal. Hed also like to thank his father for making a wholesome breakfast each morning. A big, warm thanks to those who have long supported Tyler (John and Isabel Joynt, John Graham, Juli, Kris, Dana, Dickie Lee) and to those who will in the future (Carter, Sterling, Colton, Lexi, Brynlee). A special thanks to the special team at Best Life. This book would not have been possible without friends like Bone and Karen, Jason Adams, Josh Dean, Colin OBanion, Jeff Surowka, Jenny, and Joel Weber. Nor would it have been possible without the wisdom of some very special counsel for SRL, such as John Casalena, Gordon Zucker-man, and Rick Hamilton. Thanks to the smart, thoughtful minds of people like Michael Pollan, Gary Taubes, and Marion Nestle whose writings make our country a better place in which to live and to eat. And a very special thanks to Miss Mieke ten Have.

Drew thanks his parents for taking a leap and returning to the land and his patients, who teach him about the power of food and challenge him to be a better physician daily. He graciously thanks Columbia Universitys Department of Psychiatry and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, where he has been privileged to train and now to teach. The facultys tireless pursuit of a better understanding of the brain and better treatments has been a constant inspiration. Special thanks to his colleagues who read early drafts and provided wise counsel, particularly Phil Muskin, Dan Chrzanowski, and David Schab, and also to Marcia Lux, Julian Abrams, and Lars Lund who have continued to make him a better doctor ever since intern year. Bob Wise has served as an invaluable mentor and provided detailed comments and exceptional counsel. MVA would be proud. Additionally, the guidance of Ron Rieder, Pel Sarti, and Ron Puddu has made this book possible. Drew thanks his dear friends for their unwavering support and his wife Lucy for being the ideal partner in life and in parenting: patient, thoughtful, and firm about the need for food and sleep. He thanks Greta for making lifes priorities clear.

What if you discovered that the best place to begin your personal pursuit of happiness is at the end of your fork? Emerging research from the fields of neuroscience and nutrition shows that by changing what you eat, you can improve your mental and emotional well-being. You can stabilize your moods. You can improve your focus. You can even make your brain grow.

So what do we mean by happiness? There have been many books published in recent years that explore different approaches to attaining happinesssome from motivational speakers, others from experts in the field of positive psychology. At their core these are suggestions for behavioral changes that are meant to improve your psychological well-being and outlook on life. We are coming at this from a very different perspective: Before you start changing your outlook on life to improve your emotional well-being, we want to make sure your eating behavior is the best it can be so that the master mood regulatorthe brainis provided with what it needs to be strong, sharp, healthy and happy.

Increasingly, in our experience, it seems that fewer people truly feel they have control over their diet. Its just too hard to eat right, we often hear. Everyone says something different is another refrain we get a lot. We want to change this state of affairs and settle the confusion about what needs to be eaten for a happy, healthy brain and body. The Happiness Diet provides concrete tools (tasty ones, too) for doing just that.

But as modern Americans, we face some formidable and largely invisible obstacles in seeking happiness. The food we eat each day is undermining our emotional and mental well-being. Many of the nutrients that human brains depend on for healthy functioning have been stripped from our food supply by factory farming and by modern methods of food processing. Compounding these losses, new chemicals have been added that impair our brain functioning. Youre probably well aware that our food is responsible for our epidemic levels of obesity and diabetes, but you might be surprised that its also largely responsible for skyrocketing levels of brain disorders. We all want to be happy, but every day most of us consume what amounts to a series of Unhappy Meals.

Thanks to the introduction of industrial-scale food processing, Americans have changed their dietary habits more in the past 100 years than all of humanity had in the previous 100,000. The Modern American Dietwe call it the MADis characterized first and foremost by simple sugars and refined carbohydrates now found in everything from cereal to pasta. These sugars play tricks on your brain, so you keep craving more and more of them, even though sugar consumption actually contributes to the shrinkage of key areas of your brain responsible for everything from memories to mood regulation.

The second largest source of calories in the MAD are added fatsrefined vegetable and seed oils that have high amounts of omega-6 fats as well as trans fats, which have been linked to an increased risk of depression. A third critical aspect of the MAD most detrimental to our brain functions is the factory farming of cows, pigs, chickens, and even fish. Not only are these creatures pumped full of antibiotics and hormones to promote their growth, but they feed on an unnatural diet of grain, which leaves their flesh deficient in many of the very fats and nutrients our brains have required from animals since the dawn of humankind. Strange as it seems, with the MAD you can expand your waistline and starve your brain at the same time, which is exactly what growing numbers of Americans are doing.

Study after study in the medical research journals confirm that people who are most dependent on MAD-style eating habits have increased levels of depression, anxiety, mood swings, hyperactivity, and a wide variety of other mental and emotional problems. Our belief, backed up by ample research, is that the best way to prevent the MAD assault on our health and happiness is to go back to eating the wholesome foods that nurtured the development of our brains over tens of thousands of years of evolution.

Lets take a closer look at the cheeseburger on the cover of the book. To many nutritionists, this is a snapshot of everything that is wrong with the American diet: Its fatty, full of cholesterol, and high in calories. In the Happiness Diet, though, our burger is an important source for much of what you and your brain need for healthy growth and high functioning. The reason is that this is not your typical fast-food burger. The cheese and meat both came from grass-fed cows, ensuring you will get a good supply of brain-healthy omega-3s and other nutrients not found in factory-farmed animals. The lettuce and tomatoes were organically grown, so they offer the maximum number of valuable nutrients such as folate and lycopene without the risks of pesticides. The bun is made of whole grains, so it includes magnesium, zinc, B vitamins, and fiber instead of the empty calories in your typical bun.