Food & Mood – Not the book’s fault. But, meh.

So great is man’s hunger for forbidden foods! – Ovid, Metamorphoses

Food & Mood by Elizabeth Somer, MA, RD is NOT a bad book. In fact, it’s a high-quality, glossy-covered, jammed-to-the-rafters guidebook that goodreads calls “groundbreaking”.

In it, Somer proves her chops with scientific research on how “stress, diet, mood and immunity are interconnected” (page 169).

There’s a fantastic self-assessment (of your diet) along with other quizzes throughout. There are charts and tables, smart foods and dumb foods, an appendix on food groups, serving sizes and the “Feeling Good Diet” with 40 pages devoted to recipes for things like Curried Squash Soup and (yum!) To-Die-For Low-Fat Brownies, among many other meals and desserts!

I found the beginning of the book to be a tad overwhelming because it’s more-than-a-little scientific as it explains how tryptophan, amino acids and serotonin act like radioactive compounds and cause disease. In fact, I may…