What you eat can affect how you feel — and not just when it comes to your physical health. A recent study finds a beneficial connection between mental health and Japanese food.
Eating a traditional Japanese diet may help reduce depression. That's according to a four-year study of nearly 12,500 workers at five large companies in Japan.
Researchers connected information about symptoms of depression with food, noting how frequently subjects followed a traditional Japanese diet.
Now this isn't just any Japanese food — no pork cutlet with sauce or fried chicken or tako-yaki.
This diet centers on fish, miso soup, soy products, cooked vegetables and white rice. Along with mushrooms, seaweed, green tea and even some salty items.
Those who followed these food patterns most closely were 17% to 20% less likely to show symptoms of depression compared to those who ate the least of those foods.
The study was published in the Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences journal, and it's not the only peer-reviewed research coming to a similar conclusion.
A 2020 study in the journal Public Health Nutrition found what it termed a “healthy Japanese diet” “might be associated with better mental health.”
Those specific foods were very similar, including mushrooms, seaweed, soybeans, and potatos, as well as vegetables, fish and shellfish and fruit.
