Replace poor dietary habits of processed “junk” foods and “junk” con­tent with a digest of healthy fats to feed our brains along with pos­i­tive nar­ra­tives to feed our souls and imaginations.

“I do believe you are what you per­ceive. What comes is bet­ter than what came before.” — The Vel­vet Under­ground, “I Found a Rea­son”, 1970

Diet col­ors our char­ac­ter and shapes our real­i­ty. Between the invis­i­ble lines that con­nect what we eat with how we feel, or between what we think and what we expe­ri­ence, there is the inex­tri­ca­ble influ­ence of our entire phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal diets on how we per­ceive ourselves.

What we decide to put into our bod­ies and minds is a very inti­mate choice. Yet, we are eas­i­ly over­whelmed by innu­tri­tious offer­ings. Glob­al eat­ing trends are in seri­ous need of revi­sion. Around the world, unhealthy eat­ing habits now cause more deaths than tobac­co and high blood pres­sure. An esti­mat­ed 11 mil­lion deaths were attrib­ut­able to unhealthy diets in 2017. The caus­es of these deaths includ­ed 10 mil­lion deaths from heart dis­ease, 913,000 deaths from obe­si­ty-relat­ed can­cers, and near­ly 339,000 deaths from type 2 dia­betes.⁵ Over-con­sum­ing unwhole­some foods com­pro­mis­es one’s life. The most impor­tant realign­ment we can make in our phys­i­cal diets is to focus on eat­ing health­i­er foods. Whole grains, seeds, legumes, fruits, and veg­eta­bles ben­e­fit car­dio­vas­cu­lar health as well as men­tal health.

Address­ing the cor­re­la­tion between food and mood, a New York Times arti­cle points out how the major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans take in an abun­dance of calo­ries while being mal­nour­ished when it comes to micronu­tri­ents.⁶ The micronu­tri­ents which are com­mon­ly found in plant-based foods, are vital, nour­ish­ing com­po­nents required to ener­gize and strength­en our brains. Eat­ing more fresh fruits and veg­eta­bles and eat­ing less processed foods is the most imme­di­ate way to bet­ter reg­u­late our moods. A prop­er­ly main­tained, bal­anced phys­i­cal diet has the abil­i­ty to alle­vi­ate depres­sion and anxiety.

The dig­i­tal space is anoth­er area that requires care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion when it comes to what we con­sume. End­less­ly scrolling through con­tent arranged by algo­rithms designed to keep you fur­ther addict­ed to screens will not help improve per­son­al and social cohesion.

“Dig­i­tal sab­baths” are the quick­est way to reclaim atten­tion for one­self and one’s mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships. We don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly think that apps designed to mon­i­tor the use of oth­er apps is as good of an answer to this prob­lem as sim­ply step­ping away from our screens. And, when we return we return to our news and enter­tain­ment, we should strive to inten­tion­al­ly seek out uplift­ing sto­ries and inspir­ing expres­sions of cre­ativ­i­ty to fuel pos­i­tive mind­sets and actions.

We believe that the more mind­ful we are about nour­ish­ing our­selves, the health­i­er our bod­ies, brains, rela­tion­ships, com­mu­ni­ties, and ulti­mate­ly soci­ety will be.