A healthy diet is one of the key pillars of brain health – the food we eat fuels our bodies, and that includes the brain. Take a look at our five top picks for brain health focused food and diet books. We’ve chosen books grounded in science that can help you understand how your food can influence your brain health – so whether that’s recipe ideas or learnings from a scientific study, you can make the educated choice about what goes in your mouth.
The Doctor’s Kitchen
Dr Rupy Aujla
“Whether it’s to nurture your microbiome, maximise your genetic potential or even improve your mental wellbeing, everything appears to boil down to some core principles.”
Dr Rupy Aujla brings us a health-focused cookbook backed up by real science. This is ‘food as medicine’, but without the spurious claims so often made in the world of ‘wellness’. You won’t find fads and miracle foods here, just tasty food for a healthy body and brain.
The Mind-Gut Connection
Emeran Mayer, MD
Emeran Mayer’s book explores the link between our stomachs and our brains – specifically the impact that diet has on our mood and cognitive health. Mayer looks at how much the microbes that populate our stomachs (our microbiome) can have an influence that extends beyond the gut.
The China Study
T. Colin Campbell, PhD
Thomas M. Campbell, MD
The China Study documents the comprehensive and vast nutrition study known as the ‘China-Cornell-Oxford project’, and examines its implications for diet across the world. Father-and-son team Colin and Thomas Campbell discuss the impact diet has on neurological health, cancer rates, heart disease and diabetes, challenging much of the previously established thinking on things such as the benefits of a high-protein diet.
Brain Food – How to Eat Smart and Sharpen Your Mind
Dr Lisa Mosconi
Dr Mosconi knows her stuff – spending over 15 years in the field of Alzheimer’s research. In her book, Brain Food, she uses her background in neuroscience to explain the pitfalls of modern diets and the ways in which we can improve our brain health through making good food choices.
The MIND Diet
Maggie Moon MS RDN
Subtitled ‘A Scientific Approach to Enhancing Brain Function and Helping Prevent Alzheimer’s and Dementia’, Maggie Moon’s book unpacks the MIND diet, a combination of the Mediterranean and DASH diets – the former being based upon foods like oily fish, fruit and veg commonly eaten in southern Europe, and the latter being a specially designed diet for combating heart disease. It talks through the principles of the diet, the science behind it, and how it’s been proven to help reduce the risk of developing dementia.
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Dr Jamie Wilson is hometouch’s founder and Chief Medical Officer. Jamie’s creation of hometouch was inspired by his work as a dementia psychiatrist in the NHS, and he has written about healthcare issues in The Times and the Evening Standard. Jamie has a MBBS from the University of Leeds and has spent a decade in the NHS, working as a Psychiatric Registrar and Memory Specialist at Imperial College Hospital.
