Quote · On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Dr. Chris Palmer: Your Diet Could Be Causing Anxiety, Depression & Brain Fog (6 Simple Changes to Make Today)
Where this was said
Why Is The Food System In America So Harmful?
At 14:13 · chapter starts 9:55
In the episode's intellectual core, Dr. Palmer confronts a deeply embedded assumption in his own field: that diet has no meaningful role in serious mental illness. He argues that decades of neuroscience and cell biology research have been quietly converging on metabolic dysfunction as a shared mechanism across mental health conditions — from ADHD to bipolar disorder to schizophrenia — and that this link mirrors the metabolic fingerprint of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. People with metabolic disorders are disproportionately likely to have mental health conditions, and vice versa. Palmer's key provocation is deceptively simple: the food we eat becomes the neurotransmitters in our brains and influences every cell's function. [1] — Dr. Chris Palmer "Decades of converging neuroscience evidence point to metabolic dysfunction — not just genes or trauma — as a root driver of conditions from…" 04:40 Ignoring nutrition in psychiatry, he says, leaves clinicians perpetually chasing symptoms rather than treating causes.
About 10,000 chemicals are in the US food supply, and manufacturers can add new ones simply by declaring them 'Generally Recognized as Safe' — no independent testing required. A single additive called Tara flour hospitalised over 400 Americans with liver failure before anyone asked what it was.
A new food additive called Tara flour, added to a beef substitute product, hospitalised over 400 people across the US — many with liver failure — before the FDA began investigating.
In the US, manufacturers can declare new food additives 'Generally Recognized as Safe' (GRAS) without any mandatory rigorous independent testing — an honor system with life-threatening consequences.
About 10,000 chemicals are in the US food supply, many of which have not been rigorously tested for safety, let alone for their impact on human metabolism or brain function.
