Beat the holiday season blues - with broccoli and berries!

Rich food and booze can leave you feeling tired and blue.

'Tis the season to be jolly, so the Christmas carol tells us, but not everyone is feeling particularly perky at this time of year.

Between running the gauntlet of overcrowded shopping malls in search of perfect gifts for hard-to-buy-for loved ones; negotiating the obligatory family Christmas dinner (a painful experience for many people whose family didn't quite pop out of a Hallmark card); and wedging get-togethers with colleagues, friends and neighbours into an already overstuffed schedule; many people feel more stressed and miserable at this time of year than at any other.

The rich food served at all these social occasions isn't helping. How so? Well, for starters, there's 'holiday heart syndrome', which is not just a silly excuse for the epidemic of 'died suddenlies' that has occurred since billions of people got injected with transfection agents that produce an artery- and heart-damaging foreign viral protein.

As I wrote in my previous article, 'Tis the season to... have a heart attack and die (which was published in 2018, long before the dinosaur media began blaming everything from soccer referees' whistles to making the bed to cold showers, for unexpected heart attacks and sudden cardiac death):

“The phenomenon has been described in the medical literature for almost two decades, ever since a team of US researchers headed up by Dr Robert Kloner plotted monthly rates of death from ischaemic heart disease (damage to the heart resulting from decreased blood supply, usually due to the build-up of cholesterol-laden plaque in the coronary arteries) over 12 years in Los Angeles County.

Their first observation was that there were more cardiac deaths in the winter than in the summer, which was unsurprising as colder temperatures had already been demonstrated to cause changes to blood vessel function and blood clotting that increase the risk of a heart attack.

However, when they broke the monthly data down into day-by-day tallies and plotted them on a graph, they noticed a striking increase in the daily number of heart-related deaths which began in late November with the Thanksgiving holiday, continued escalating through Christmas, peaked on New Year’s Day, and then declined.

The increased death rate on the holidays did not appear to be related to extreme cold, since a) LA has a mild climate year-round and b) there is not much variation in daily minimum temperatures during December and January.

Kloner and his team speculated that the upswing in cardiac deaths during the holiday season might result from either the emotional stress of the holidays (family get-togethers - yay!!!!), or overindulgence in food and alcohol, or both.”

'Tis the season to... have a heart attack and die

Holiday heart syndrome is on the 'sin of commission' side of the ledger. But there are also dietary 'sins of omission': fascinating research suggests that higher consumption of fruits and vegetables is associated with a state that the paper's authors described as 'flourishing' - isn't that a beautiful word? 

Specifically, the study set out to determine if there were any connections between consumption of 4 types of food: fruit, vegetables, sweets, and chips; and feelings and behaviours associated with human flourishing: positive mood, feelings of engagement, meaning, and purpose in life, and curiosity and creativity

And it turned out that there were. Participants who ate more fruit and vegetables throughout the 13 days of the study reported "higher average eudaemonic well-being [from the Greek word eudaemonia - a contented state of being happy, healthy and prosperous], more intense feelings of curiosity, and greater creativity" than those who ate less fresh produce.

Even more fascinating was the finding that on individual days when participants' consumption of fruits and vegetables was higher, they scored higher on eudaemonic well-being, curiosity, and creativity than on days when they ate less.

This study fits perfectly with others that I've discussed in previous posts: Want to feel happier? Change what's on your plate! and Good Mood Food. Taken together, these studies indicate that a plant-centred diet high in fresh produce makes us feel better in every way: not just physically, but mentally and emotionally as well.

And yet the time of year when we would ideally be feeling most connected with others, and with our own deepest values, is traditionally the season of overindulgence in the foods least likely to facilitate these experiences: hyperpalatable foods laden with refined carbohydrates, saturated fat, salt and food additives you can't even pronounce!

So I'd like to invite you to participate in an experiment this holiday season: make fruit and vegetables the centrepiece of your festive meals, steer clear of the fat- and sugar-laden offerings and the mounds of flesh foods, and take note of whether it makes a difference to how well you deal with your relatives, in-laws, out-laws, and all the other challenges that this time of year brings.

Here are my top fruit & veg-based recipes that look great on the Christmas table, and will have even the most conventional eaters asking for more:

Eggplant Hommous

Mitch's Famous Anti-Cancer Salad

Quinoa Stuffed Mushrooms

Mushroom Loaf

Berrylicious Tart

Mango & Coconut Pie

I'd love to hear your feedback if you participate in the Great Fruit & Veg Christmas Experiment. Comment below!

And if you would you like expert guidance in developing an eating plan that optimises your emotional well-being, I invite you to register for your free one-month trial of my nutrition and health education program, EmpowerEd. You can join in our December 2023 Deep Dive webinar, 'The Food-Gut-Mood Connection' (or watch the recording afterward) and access many hundreds of hours of previous webinar recordings, as well as 'Healthy Eating 101' which teaches you how to set up your kitchen, shop, plan and batch-cook for low-fuss, wholesome and delicious meals.

And if you’re scratching your head, trying to decide what to buy for that health-conscious person in your life, you could always…