A Nutritional Psychiatrist's (Very) Hot Take On 3 Buzzy Brain Foods

Georgia Ede, M.D., doesn't believe in brain foods. Now, this may sound shocking coming from a Harvard-trained nutritional psychiatrist, especially one who just released a book called Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind, but it's not the foods themselves she's against—it's the idea that one or two superfoods can transform your brain that Ede wants to dismantle. 

"The things that you can do to improve your brain health have very little to do with adding special things to the diet," she shares on this episode of the mindbodygreen podcast. "They really have to do with subtracting things from the diet that are working against your brain in the first place." You know, ultra-processed foods, inflammatory seed oils, and the like. 

Red wine is often touted as the healthiest alcoholic beverage you can have, due to its polyphenols and antioxidants1. However, "As a psychiatrist who focuses on optimizing brain health, I really can't recommend red wine as a part of a healthy diet," Ede declares. 

That doesn't mean you can't ever drink a glass or two! If you do drink, then it's a fine option. But if you don't drink, don't add it to your diet in the hopes of consuming more polyphenols. The downsides of alcohol far outweigh the antioxidant benefits it may have.

"What I don't want people to think is that red wine is a brain-healthy beverage," she adds. "Alcohol is a powerful promoter of oxidative stress and inflammation2. It's also 100% guaranteed to disrupt your sleep quality." If you're struggling with mental health, she even recommends abstaining from alcohol for 30 days (great timing—it's Dry January!) 

Meat—specifically red meat—has long been vilified when it comes to brain health. One study has even associated red and processed meat consumption with an increased risk for Alzheimer's (and there's way more anti-meat research where that came from). 

But if you take a closer look at the science, says Ede, it's not the meat itself that's bad for us—it's likely the processing. High-quality meat is actually very nutrient dense, and all meat is considered a complete source of protein as it contains all nine essential amino acids your body needs—many of which are crucial for cognition. 

"This is a natural, whole food that we've been eating since time immemorial," Ede shares. Of course, you should do what's best for your own body—perhaps some basic blood work to figure out how much meat you can tolerate—but Eden doesn't subscribe to the pervasive argument that meat is "bad" for us. 

Nuts, seeds, and legumes are beloved brain foods. Research has found that the nutrients in almonds, hazelnuts, and walnuts could help prevent or even manage Alzheimer's disease3. Ask a brain health expert what's on their grocery list, and chances are some sort of nut or seed makes the cut—but Ede begs to differ. 

"Just because a food contains a nutrient doesn't necessarily mean we can access it," she explains. You see, some plant foods contain anti-nutrients meant to protect the baby plant against aggressors. They essentially "guard" their nutrients, "so it can be much harder for us to access nutrients from plant foods," Ede adds. 

Cooking, sprouting, and fermenting these foods can offset those anti-nutrients, but if you're eating them raw and mixed with other nutrient-rich animal foods, you might not get the most nutritional bang for your buck. 

She references an old study that examined this very scenario: "If you eat oysters by themselves, you will see a very nice rise in blood zinc levels, signifying that you have absorbed a lot of the zinc from those oysters," she notes. "If you eat that same amount of oysters with black beans, you absorb about half of the zinc from those oysters. And if you eat the same amount of oysters with corn tortillas, you absorb virtually none of the zinc from those oysters. It's a very powerful effect."