Bananas are said to enhance your mood
Boost your mood with these top 10 enhancing foods, so if you're looking to get healthy this January you can with a smile on your face.
Zizzi restaurants up and down the country are helping customers to smile and beat the January blues this year and have added a mood-boosting set of dishes to its new Winter specials menu, scientifically proven to help improve people’s moods.
Working closely with Food Psychologist Dr Christy Fergusson, Zizzi’s ‘smile development kitchen’ has conducted extensive research into the different ingredients that improve people’s moods – foods that include happiness-inducing compounds such as tyrosine, folate, magnesium and lycopene.
Top 10 mood enhancing foods:
1. Olive Oil
2. Brazil Nuts
3. Kiwi fruit
4. Bananas
5. Turkey
6. Rocket
7. Mushrooms
8. Dark chocolate
9. Oysters
10. Tomatoes
The research revealed that Olive Oil, Brazil Nuts, chocolate and bananas are amongst the most mood-enhancing foods to indulge in if you’re feeling low this month, and a team of Zizzi ‘smile makers’ working in the ‘smile development kitchen’ have used some of these ingredients to create three new mood-enhancing dishes on the winter specials menu – a rocket-topped beef and gorgonzola rustica pizza, banana and dark chocolate calzone and tortellini ‘in brodo’ - a special vegetable broth made from tomatoes.
Dr Christy Fergusson, The Food Psychologist, said: “How happy, upbeat and positive you feel isn’t just about having the right pair of shoes or a great hair cut (although these help). Our brain actually needs the right building blocks to create what is known as our neurotransmittors aka our feel good chemicals. The good news is that we can boost our mood by nourishing our bodies with the right vitamins, mineral and amino acids. This is why some foods are known as mood foods because they’re packed with specific nutrients designed to give our body the right ingredients to make our happy chemicals.
“During long winter days, a lack of sunshine can leave our body deficient in our feel good chemical serotonin. This is why so many of us can face the winter blues come January. What many people don’t realise is that by nourishing your system with key nutrients we can literally eat ourselves happy.”
To make our feel good chemical serotonin, folate, contained in rocket, is required. So the new Winter specials menu at Zizzi includes healthy topping of rocket on the new rustica pizza. Additionally, the new Tortellini ‘in brodo’ is topped with tomatoes, an antioxidant rich food that helps us beat the blues, as lycopene (found in tomato skins) can help stop the build-up of pro-inflammatory compounds associated with depression.
Jo Fawcett, Zizzi spokesperson, commented on the research: “It is well documented how beneficial a Mediterranean diet can be for a healthy lifestyle, and how much of an impact this can have on mood.
“A banana contains 12 milligrams of tyrosine, producing norepinephrine, dopamine and serotonin - our happy and energising brain chemicals. This, combined with the banana's vitamin content that further helps the brain produce happy chemicals and the magnesium found in chocolate, should ensure our new banana and chocolate calzone puts a guaranteed smile on diners’ faces in January.”
Tagged in Health Nutrition Diet Healthy eating