America per capita has more people silently suffering from forms of anxiety and stress than any other nation in the world. The country is also dealing with obesity and diabetes. At the heart of everything is diet, or food intake. Guess what? Approaching food the right way can turn it into a medicine cabinet. Suddenly, your kitchen becomes far more effective (relatively speaking of course) than a doctor's office.
Nutritious food never hurt anyone. However, the mainstream American medical industry kills more people per year than smoking. If you want to be healthier, start with foods like these first.
Get Green with Asparagus
These green stalks with the funny shaped ends may not be extremely tasty, but they are versatile in the kitchen, blend in well, and deliver a big punch of folate. Basically, there is no limit to how many you can eat, pile them on! You can add them to stews, sauces, salads, or even sandwiches but keep in mind that they are at their best in your digestive system when eaten raw with minimal steaming to soften them up.
Can't Go Wrong with Avocados
Their creamy, packed with health fats, brimming over with glutathione (a protective agent against cell oxidation), they also come with a long list of vitamins that together are like an anti-stress cocktail. If you don't mind the taste, they can go well with essentially anything. However, the key with avocados is to watch your portion sizes (1/4 of a typical avocado). The fat content adds up quick, which isn't a bad thing, but can be brutal when mixed with daily food intake.
Get Soothed by Blueberries
Hailed as perhaps the most nutritious berry in the world, and renowned for their free radical fighting antioxidants, blueberries also have a way of bringing a smile to your face, and lessening the physical side-effects (not necessarily the psychological) of anxiety. Somehow they sharpen your senses and overall cognition. Berries in general, through controlled studies where people had to give speeches to large crowds, blueberries, and berries in general seem to lower social and performance anxiety as well!
Ph macadamia nuts; these things are as good as avocados, come with tons of healthy fat as well, but the one downside is that for the average adult meal their portion size is just one single nut! Now cashews come in bigger portions but not much bigger. Like most nuts they are super dense in nutrition, which includes zinc. And, low levels of sink have been shown to add to or downright cause certain levels of stress and anxiety.
Chocolaty and Stress Free
While chocolate is notorious when it comes to cheating on diets, and scarfing it down in fits of depression, it's also quite healthy and will most definitely calm those nerves of steel. Shoot for organic and as dark as possible. Remember, bitter is actually really awesome to cook with when you use clashing (especially salty/spicy) ingredients.
