Foods That Improve Brain Function and Mood

Editor’s note: Season 8 of the podcast Chasing Life with Dr. Sanjay Gupta gets back to basics with an in-depth examination of the brain in different states. Each episode will focus on one of those states — the distracted brain, the frightened brain, the depressed brain and others — to spotlight what is going on in our heads and how it affects our bodies.

Are you really what you eat? Decades of research back up the saying that you are what you eat and support the important health effects of good nutrition.

Healthy food choices increase people’s overall life expectancy and reduce the risk of developing a wide variety of medical issues, including heart disease and cancer.

The health effects of food don’t just stop at the body. They extend into the mind as well, affecting not only our risk of future brain-based conditions (such as stroke and dementia) but also our ability to think clearly in the moment as well as our mood and mental health.

But it’s not so easy to know what to eat for brain health, or even how to measure it. Many of us have been told that foods such as blueberries, salmon, nuts and leafy greens are so-called brain foods. But how do they work? Are they neuroprotective? Do they make us smarter? More alert? Less stressed? Happier?