Eating well and feeling well

Gif recipes are my first ‘big thing’ of 2016. Gif recipes are 30 second(-ish) looping gifs which demonstrate how to prepare foods that many people (myself included) find intimidating.

To a care leaver like me, gif recipes are revolutionary. My last real cooking lesson was with my second year Home Economics teacher, so to have cooking techniques demonstrated to me in this manner makes a huge difference. Making scotch eggs from scratch was my personal moon landing.

In her recent seminar on Caring with Vitality (part of Care Leavers Week 2015) Rees Foundation Trustee Andrea Warman and her guests brought home the importance of food and nutrition in maintaining good physical and mental health.

“It is the daily routines and the quality of relationships between carers and the children and young people they look after that will really shape futures.
 
Nowhere is that clearer than in food practices. I have met carers from all over the world, and have been fortunate to hear their stories about how cooking, shopping and eating together has built trust, lasting bonds, a sense of belonging - and most importantly helped to prepare young people for a truly healthy adulthood. Because it's not just a matter of teaching basic cooking on a budget. I believe it's so much more than that. Aware and sensitive carers will recognise the social and emotional meanings of food. That being able to sit around a table, share a meal - and above all understand that eating well is key to self-compassion and self-care - are essential skills that we all require. And that, whether a foster carer or a residential social worker - they have primary responsibility and are role models for passing this on...”

It’s important to establish a routine of regular meal times. Having a regular meal routine gives our days structure we can plan around. It’s that all important first step towards self-discipline, self-improvement and self-acceptance. To develop resilience we need to understand that key concept of “self-compassion and self-care”.

As a child of neglect, self-care doesn’t come naturally to me. It was only after some pretty lengthy spells of reflection I realised that’s what I’d been missing; when it came to food I would just grab the yellow-stickered items from the nearest supermarket and try to be content with my findings. My 2015 bought with it a whole host of mental health challenges that I was totally under-equipped to deal with, but I decided I want life to be worth more than someone else’s abandoned pizza, so I set to work.

To help dodge the Prozac I started researching the links between neurochemistry and nutrition. It turns out that balancing your neurochemistry (and by extension your mental health) requires much better nutrition than you get reheating ready meals two days past their use-by. If your diet’s bad you’ll feel bad, simple. Junk food will mess up your dopamine system and leave you lethargic and sad. Not getting enough tryptophan will leave you struggling to make enough serotonin and your world will feel empty and unfocussed. I could go on for days about the merits of theanine-rich green tea.

Mixing poor adult nutrition with neurological damage done during formative development is a recipe for disaster. The awful state of our national diet plays a major role in the growing mental health crisis. I’ll never forget meeting the Scottish care leaver who told me in shock “I didn’t know you could eat plants!”

As professionals we need to do everything in our power to make sure the people we’re working with have the knowledge, support and access to resources they need to establish a healthy relationship with food through a routine of cooking regularly and eating well.