Dirty Linen - A Food Podcast with Dani Valent · A Deep in the Weeds Production

Felice Jacka (Food & Mood Centre at Deakin University) - Connecting food and mood

·40 min·2 clips

Felice Jacka says she lives to "smash the business model of the big food."

Dani Vallant opens by saying she is trying to smash the business model of big food and improve population health. She welcomes listeners to Dirty Linen and sets up a conversation about how food and mood connect. Felice Jacker joins as Professor of Nutritional Psychiatry and founder of the Food and Mood Centre at Deakin University. Vallant asks what nutritional psychiatry actually is. Jacker keeps it grounded in the link between what people eat and their mental wellbeing. The discussion keeps circling back to the same point: food choices are not only personal habits, they sit inside a bigger health system. Jacker also mentions her children's book, There's a Zoo in My Poo, which gives the episode a lighter turn. Vallant then brings in a story about gardening and wellbeing that connected her with Jacker. That leads to Farm My School and its second farm on a school ground. The project works in low socioeconomic status areas where families with less access to money, and often time, can struggle to make healthy food choices consistently. The program teaches children to garden. It also makes produce boxes available to the community. A cooking component rounds out the work. Jacker pulls the conversation back to the larger picture she is now focusing on in her research. She says the global industrialized food system costs the world at least $20 trillion a year. More than half of that cost comes from human health, because unhealthy diets drive chronic disease and early death. The rest lands on the environment, especially biodiversity loss. She stresses that biodiversity matters below ground too, because soil is full of microbial life and the farming model built on fertilizers, pesticides, and fungicides is damaging it at an alarming rate. The episode ends with a blunt warning about big business treating people as walking wallets and their health as secondary, followed by thanks for the research-backed advice listeners can take to the shops.

As heard by us

Food, mood, and public health come together in a grounded, practical conversation.

Dani Vallant talks with Felice Jacka about food, mood, and public health. Jacka comes across as a clear guide on the links between diet and mental wellbeing, and her role at Deakin University and the Food and Mood Centre is laid out without fuss.

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Why you'd press play

You want food science that connects what you eat to your mental wellbeing and the wider food system.

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