[soundcite url=”” text=”” start=”” end=””]By KRISTIN MONTEMARANO
Every night at 1 a.m., uneasily tucked in her bed, Val Goodrich would stare at her fluorescent phone, frantically reading article after article. At 15-years old, she was on powerful, controlling drugs for her skin. She was an outpatient at a mental hospital. At 15-years-old, you would never expect to be experiencing depression as deeply as she was. Those nights, alone in her room, she would search for anything that would help stop her from drowning in her illness.
At 15-years old, Val also became a vegetarian.
While her journey was difficult at first, three years later, while sitting in a nutrition class at her dream school, The Culinary Institute of America, she watched a TED Talk about the ways in which food can control the way our bodies function. With an already changing mindset about food, the discussion in class helped give her a push toward believing the idea that food is a powerful medium and basis of control for her body and life.
This moment became pivotal, and as a 21-year-old who is now a full time content creator and part-time freelance food writer in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, she takes everything she has learned from her younger years and applies that knowledge to her life. Now a vegetarian for six-and-a-half years and newly gluten free, she uses a balanced diet to holistically heal her overall health, depression, and skin.
“Seeing the extreme ways in how positively my body has changed through healthful and nutritional eating has been nothing short of emotional, powerful, and truly life altering,” Goodrich says.
Linking Food and Mental Health
Data from The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services details the many ways in which Americans slack in terms of proper nutrition. Daily American’s diets consistently exceed the amount of calories from solid fats, processed sugars, overly refined grains, sodium, and saturated fat. Americans also have difficulty meeting the daily recommended requirements for vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and oils.
In addition to that, another major health issue is mental illness. The Anxiety and Depression Association of America reports that anxiety disorders are the most popular mental health illness in the country, accounting for about 18.1 percent of the population. It is common for those with an anxiety disorder to also experience depression, and almost half of those patients are officially diagnosed with both.
In an article published in 2018 by Time Magazine, it was reported that during that time, almost 40 percent of American adults said they felt more anxious than they felt last year.
Stress, depression, and anxiety have undeniably grown within at least the past decade or so, and 86 percent of those surveyed believe that mental health does in fact have an impact on your physical health. It is also somewhat undeniable that food does the same thing.
According to a Harvard Health article, your brain requires the absolute best food to function the best possible way. What you eat directly effects your body’s functions. About 95 percent of the serotonin that gets released into your brain is produced in your gastrointestinal tract. Your tract is lined with nerve cells, which can not only influence how you digest but also how you feel.
The task of the nerve cells and neurotransmitters like serotonin is completely dependent on the good bacteria in your stomach, which help prevent inflammation, absorb nutrients and activate pathways that link the stomach and the brain. All of this together quite literally changes and affects your emotional state and mood, thus directly linking food, body, wellness, and mental health together.
Mind Body Green, an online publication, is dedicated toward the wellness movement. In a recent Instagram post, they also touched on the fact that food has a direct link to anxiety.
The Growth of a Movement
Wellness, a fast growing movement, is a way to promote the idea of practicing a balanced life, which includes focusing on healthier food and daily choices to better mental and physical health.
Val’s story is one real life example of how practicing health and wellness have completely deconstructed a life and helped put it back together to make it whole again.
Other people are catching on, and the wellness movement is gaining immense popularity. This growth is reflected in western culture and the trillion-dollar food industry.
In February 2019, Forbes listed three new ground breaking trends that are changing the food industry: health and wellness, transparency, and plant based diets. Each trend has a different meaning, but they are all connected.
“Health and wellness” is an umbrella term that can touch many industries other than food, however it is the grounding element for the growth of the food industry.
According to The Global Wellness Institute, the health and wellness industry alone has grown 12.8 percent from 2015 to 2017. The sectors listed for the industry include beauty and personal care, healthy eating and nutrition, wellness tourism, fitness and mind-body, personalized medicine and public health, traditional medicine, wellness real estate, spas, thermal and mineral springs, as well as workplace wellness.
With the heathy eating and nutrition sector grossing $702 billion in 2017, making it the second largest group within the health and wellness industry, it subsequently affects the growth and direction of the food industry, experts say.
Plant Based Diets and Transparency
Transparency and plant-based diets are within the food industry and fit into the healthy eating and nutrition sector of health and wellness. This demonstrates how connected these trends are.
Plant-based diets and veganism, the second trend in Forbes’ article, began to grow exponentially within the past few years according to results from Molly Hemmeter and Edward Averdieck. Both Hemmeter and Averdieck have direct knowledge of the industry. Hemmeter is the president and chief executive officer of Landec Corporation, a company that creates and develops products that help people through their health and wellness journey. Edward Averdieck is the co-founder and president of The Coconut Collaborative, a plant-based coconut yogurt company dedicated toward regenerating the ecosystem around the world.
When the diet first came to people’s attention, it was incredibly stigmatized and widely unaccepted as a whole, but now with all of its growth and attention, it has become much more normalized.
According to Hemmeter, 17 percent of US citizens and 23 percent of Canadian citizens claim they are plant-based forward, meaning at least 70 percent of their diet has no attributions to animals or animal bi-product.
A 2018 report from GlobalData states that those identifying as vegan have grown 600 percent within 2014 and 2017. In 2019, the diet only continues to grow. Now a household lifestyle, more and more restaurants, chefs, food publications and people are adapting to its increase in popularity.
“When I first became a vegetarian, meatless options were scarce. I was left with the bare bones of pizza, pasta, and other carb-heavy, nutritionally-lacking dishes for most of my out-to-eat meals. Every year, I see more and more dishes available, and now I’m even beginning to see more than one plant-based option available on menus,” Goodrich says.
Though animal activism and environmental aspects contribute greatly to the switch into a more plant-based diet, it should also be noted that the idea of diets that contain less meat and dairy largely stem from the concern over what is going into an individual’s body. This way of thinking involves the concept of transparency, which is the third trend in Forbes’ article.
Transparency is the desire and demand to know where your food is made, how your food is made, who made your food, and why the food was made. It is heavily reliant on the integrity of larger food brands sold in grocery stores, as well as small grown and local farm raised food.
Samantha Abrams, co-founder of Emmy Organics, a gluten free coconut cookie brand that promotes healthy snacks and environmentalism, says that transparency is driving the food industry right now. This is due to the fact that wanting to know what you are eating contributes to the idea of being healthy, so health and wellness, as well as more selective diets like veganism and gluten free are gaining popularity.
“I believe these three trends almost have a trickling effect on one another. Since vegetarianism and plant-based meals are built on ideals of sourcing responsibly and raising animals in humane practices, people look for transparency in their products,” says Goodrich. “With that desired transparency comes a marketing in health and wellness. People love knowing these products will help them attain their health and wellness goals, which is why there are increased sales in the health and wellness world right now. In a way, these factors and trends can be thought of in vice versa in the trickle down effect as well.”
Click here for a cheat sheet on how these trends are connected.
Adapting to the Demands
Not only are restaurants picking up on these key trends, but culinary schools as well. The Advanced Baking Principles course at The Culinary Institute of America has been taught for years, and is built into the Baking and Pastry Associates Degree. Its primary focus is to teach students how to adapt to dietary needs like gluten intolerance, celiac, and veganism.
Though it has been around for so long, chef Richard Coppedge, who teaches the course, is aware of these new heavy hitting industry trends. He developed a passion for food allergies and dietary restrictions due to a curriculum change nearly 20 years ago.
As an author of his own book titled Gluten Free Baking with The Culinary Institute of America, wellness, dietary restrictions, and transparency are important elements within his everyday life and teaching.
“Probably over the last ten years I’ve seen a significant change in some people’s awareness,” Coppedge says. “It’s great to see that many students will be forced to deal with dietary changes in order for them to succeed in this business. If I can encourage their growth, then they can take it much further than I could.”
According to Brent Willis, the chief executive officer of New Age Beverages, there has been an immense drop in the sales of traditional consumer packaged goods as result of the health and wellness trend, and that anyone involved in the production of food needs to adapt to these demands.
Producers can do so by creating relationships with newer, smaller, and innovative companies, as well as changing their traditional products to fit these emerging consumer needs. Reformulating products must include the removal of ingredients like sugar alternatives, saturated fats, artificial coloring, genetically modified organisms, and less preservatives.
When Val went vegetarian and adapted toward a healthier diet, it ended up curing her depression, but from there she began to develop other ways in which she could cure her acne, make her hair grow, and digestion.
Removing large amounts of dairy from her diet and adding maca powder cleared up her skin, as well as the addition of masks including ingredients like green tea and turmeric. Eating raw nuts, nut butters, and using coconut oil masks helped give her healthier, stronger hair. For her digestion, she ate fermented foods such as sauerkraut and kimchi, as well as implemented apple cider vinegar. For more information on how these ingredients worked for her, see related links below.
Because of the results she experienced, not only does she use food to maintain her health, but she consistently chooses it before medicine when treating any ailment.
“It is always food first, it always has been food first, and it always will be food first in regards to my life,” she says.
As a firm believer in this lifestyle, she wants other people to begin implementing these popular advances within their own lives.
“There have been many scientific studies on how our diet affects our mood, performance, mental health, the earth, and overall well-being. A very important way to change our world into one where we can all just simply be happy is by taking care of ourselves mentally and physically. It’s not silly to think that one day we could live more harmoniously than we do now. It’s not illogical to go without meat. It’s not far-fetched to want to live in a world where we continue to have all four seasons and natural wildlife aplenty. It’s not “liberal” to not buy from companies that exploit people for things like cinnamon and chocolate. You are a whole entire person that can make a powerful difference in the world by making an essential change to the way you eat, purchase food, and live your life.”
View some of Val’s favorite recipes to help get you started on your journey: Watch here.
Now and in the future, Val said she wants to continue spreading the word. “More than anything in the world, I hope to one day be able to communicate and talk about food, sustainability, and wellness on a large-scale platform, whether that be through creating a company to share this message, or working for one that has a mission that follows my ideals and values.”
For a cheat sheet of all the statistics used, click here.
Related Links:
How Fermented Foods Can Help Digestion
How Apple Cider Vinegar Can Help Digestion
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