Nutritional Psychology: Understanding the Relationship Between Food and Mental Health

Nutritional Psychology: Understanding the Relationship Between Food and Mental Health provides a broad look at the intersection between food and mental health and offers a comprehensive approach to effectively prioritize nutrition as a powerful component to maintaining overall wellbeing. Each of the 16 chapters deeply informs about a broad range of nutritional factors including those that promote stable blood sugar levels, optimize brain functioning, and contribute to the microbiome and hormone levels so important to the brain-gut connection. There are useful insights into the dynamics of food selection, eating disorders, obesity, body image, and nutrition quality that can stabilize or destabilize mental and emotional disorders. Additionally, environmental influences that shape eating behaviors are fully explored.

Nutritional Psychology: Understanding the Relationship Between Food and Mental Health combines psychology, nutrition, and medicine to form a framework for optimizing the relationship between diet and mental wellbeing. This textbook is designed for undergraduate and graduate psychology and nutrition college courses for students pursuing careers as psychologists, dietitians, nurses, social workers, and a variety of health professionals who want to incorporate nutrition and eating behavior into their discussions with patients.

Dr. Cook and Dr. Champion are both clinicians who work directly with clients with psychological and physical health issues and utilize a blend of nutritional and psychological interventions in their work, providing useful clinical applications for nutritional psychology.

Andrea Cook, M.A., Ph.D., FMCHC

Andrea Cook, M.A., Ph.D., FMCHC, is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist with a telemental health private practice where she provides individual therapy to adult clients. She incorporates nutrition as an important part of all her therapy work and often recognizes clear improvements in clients when they include dietary changes as part of their treatment.

Dr. Cook has a doctorate in Clinical Psychology and a master’s degree in Counseling Psychology. She is a Functional Medicine Certified Health Coach (FMCHC), a Diabetes Educator, and has completed training in Advanced Nutritional and Integrative Medicine for Mental Health Professionals.

Dr. Cook is a faculty member at the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) where she teaches Nutritional Psychology, Health Psychology, Clinical Psychology, and Psychopathology undergraduate courses. The Nutritional Psychology course is taught as a large lecture class for 180 students, and is a course that she proposed, developed, and has taught both as a remote synchronous course using Zoom as well as a live in-person class. It was the development of this course that clarified the need for a textbook on this topic.

Jennifer Champion, DCN, CNS, CN, LDN

Dr. Jennifer Champion, DCN, CNS, CN, LDN, is a board-certified Nutritionist, Health Coach, Educator, Speaker and the Owner of NeoGenesis Nutrition, a Functional & Integrative Nutrition program that emphasizes individuality and whole-person health. The focus of her nutrition program is education on the connection between food choices and health status, and empowering individuals to make better choices and know that they are worthy of having the best life possible.

Dr. Champion’s specialties include: digestive diseases and disorders, autism, autoimmune, inflammatory conditions, hormone balance, PCOS, adrenal health, thyroid health, diabetes, genetic testing and coaching, mitochondrial function, ADHD, anxiety, trauma work through HeartMath, and hypnotherapy