Professor Felice Jacka was interviewed recently in the Guardian newspaper regarding her landmark work with the nascent field of “nutritional psychiatry”. The Australian-based scientist, who works out of her lab at the Food and Mood Centre, Deakin University, has been advocating regarding the link between ultra-processed food consumption and mental health.

Professor Jacka’s work emphasises the microbiota gut-brain axis, a bi-directional communication system connecting the enteric and central nervous systems (Appleton, 2018). Key mechanisms involved in most common mental illnesses are mediated via this axis, including altered blood glucose homeostasis and amino acid metabolism, changes to gene expression, immune system dysregulation and mitochondrial health and function. Interactions with the HPA axis, as well as other key axes, such as the HPT axis, HBA, and the HPG axis are also intertwined with this microbiota gut-brain axis. The team at the Food and Mood Centre have demonstrated through their research how ultra-processed foods impact on the composition of the gut microbiome, causing a cascade of changes to the aforementioned mechanisms, resulting in outcomes such as elevated cortisol levels,  increased systemic inflammation and morphological changes to the brain.

Key findings to date from Professor Jacka and her team have demonstrated that greater consumption of ultra-processed foods is associated with increased incidence of depression and anxiety symptoms (Lane et al., 2022). The role of dietary quality in other complex mental health conditions, such as schizophrenia and bipolar, has also been suggested in some of their recent research (Gabriel et al., 2023; Marx et al., 2017).

If you would like to learn more about nutritional psychiatry, you can join Nutritank Professional for free here.

You can also view the following  past webinars:

• Dr Emily Leeming – The Power of Gut Brain Connection Food, Mood and Microbes
• Dr Hussain Al Zabadi –The Role of Exercise in Physical and Mental Health
• Dr Simon Dyall – The Role of Omega 3 in Mental Health
• Alice Benskin – Introduction to Nutritional Psychiatry

References

Appleton J. (2018). The Gut-Brain Axis: Influence of Microbiota on Mood and Mental Health. Integrative medicine (Encinitas, Calif.), 17(4), 28–32.

Gabriel, F. C., Oliveira, M., Bruna De M Martella, Berk, M., Brietzke, E., Jacka, F. N., & Lafer, B. (2023). Nutrition and bipolar disorder: a systematic review. Nutritional neuroscience, 26(7), 637–651. https://doi.org/10.1080/1028415X.2022.2077031

Lane, M. M., Gamage, E., Travica, N., Dissanayaka, T., Ashtree, D. N., Gauci, S., Lotfaliany, M., O’Neil, A., Jacka, F. N., & Marx, W. (2022). Ultra-Processed Food Consumption and Mental Health: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies. Nutrients, 14(13), 2568. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14132568

Marx, W., Moseley, G., Berk, M., & Jacka, F. (2017). Nutritional psychiatry: the present state of the evidence. The Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, 76(4), 427–436. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0029665117002026