Mental Health X Food

My recent biology project in school was all about tackling the connection between mental health and food. Through my group's research, we discovered strong links between nutrition and alleviating depressive symptoms. I chose to delve into how tomatoes, specifically, can help lower rates of depression, anxiety, stress, and other harmful, disordered feelings that people are experiencing at higher rates in quarantine than they normally would. Essentially, tomatoes are full of antioxidants called lycopene, which we need to help balance our body's free radicals. Free radicals are oxygen-containing molecules with one or more unpaired electrons. This unstable amount of electrons causes them to be extremely reactive with other molecules which is great when we need them to fight off pathogens. But once the free radicals start to react with fatty tissue, DNA, and proteins, which are all healthy parts of our body that we need to preserve to carry out metabolic processes, they become dangerous. Part of the damage that free radicals can cause is oxidative stress, which, in turn, can lead to inflammation. Inflammation causes disruption to our blood-brain barriers and affects the neurons: this is what leads to depressive symptoms and episodes. Lycopene has the ability to give electrons to free radicals in order to terminate their highly reactive abilities. Without reacting so much with surrounding parts of the body, free radicals won't cause high rates of oxidative stress and thus inflammation.

Below is a video of me making a red sauce for pasta, which can help reduce depressive symptoms because of how rich in lycopene it is. Here is the complete recipe.

Try out this delicious and easy recipe for a quick dinner that will also make you happy :)