Good Mood Food: Unlock the Power of Diet to Think and Feel Well


by Charlotte Watts with Natalie Savona (2018)

It's tricky reading a book on nutrition when it isn't the first by any means!    You can't help noticing the conflicting advice and you spend the whole time checking Google Scholar in the hope of achieving some sort of settlement on this issue at hand.

Take milk thistle for starters.  We hear from Charlotte and Natalie that "milk thistle has a long traditional (and well researched) use for liver support" and they recommend a daily dose. And to a degree, they haven't exactly misrepresented the facts.   According to Google Scholar, there is indeed a welter of research on milk thistle though a summary of all these studies, some of which were placebo controlled, concludes with the statement that the "clinical efficacy of milk thistle is not clearly established."

Then there's the matter of whether or not to skip breakfast.  Michael Moseley, in his time restricted eating book, suggests that this is a good way to go, and indeed a recent article in the BMJ took a wide view of the research and concluded the same thing.   Charlotte and Nat are having none of that. Breakfast must not be skipped.  What to do?

And don't get me started on the phthalate and xenoestrogen controversy.  The FDA has declared BPAs safe in the quantities we absorb them, but there is no discussion of this position, and we are simply told to do our best to avoid BPAs and the like. And so it goes on. The only time when I didn't wonder about the information being provided was when it was so obvious that I didn't need to be told it again.  Perhaps some people (including me) do need to be told that exercise is good for them, but I found myself skim reading a lot of this simply because it did look like the same old!

Rating 4/10






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