Which fad diet have you chosen to follow this year? One that helps you lose weight, or one that cures your mental health problems? Chances are that if you’re really following food trends, you’ll be discarding the piles of ‘clean eating’ recipe books in your kitchen in favour of a whole new swath of literature on dieting for mental health. There’s the ‘Mad Diet’, which promises ‘easy steps to lose weight and cure depression’, the ‘Anti-Anxiety Diet’, which is a ‘Whole-Body Programme to Stop Racing Thoughts, Banish Worry and Live Panic-Free’, or ‘Food and Mood: Eating Your Way Out of Depression’. Just like the clean eating trend that came before, each mental health diet has its own mantras. Gluten continues to be the biggest threat to sanity, according to many of these self–appointed psychiatric chefs, but there are also problems with dairy, sugar and fats. And like so many diets that require you to buy a book in order to understand them, the claims are impossibly big.
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