Ways the Food We Eat Affects Our Moods
Ways the Food We Eat Affects Our Moods
Have you ever woken up at eight in the morning and realized that you were suppose to be just walking through the door at work, so, you just out of bed, toss on your clothes and instead of grabbing for your breakfast, you grab for your car keys? You get to work and the day is just so busy that you forget to eat lunch, and as the time passes, things are harder to take in and you irritability level rises, yet, for some reason, after you eat a meal, things become easier to handle? Well, this has happened to me, and I set out to find out if others experienced this and why it happens.
What you eat and how you feel have a direct link from each other. Let’s look at coffee for example. When you drink coffee, your mood changes from tired or just plain normal to energized. Alcohol can change your mood into one of pleasure (depending what you drink and how much). The only question is how!
For the ethnographic project, I hypothesized that eating certain foods can change you mood. To test this hypothesis, I looked to research. I read many books and articles, I sent out e-mails to authors and doctors, and I also sent out a survey to others to see what happened after they ate.
I began by sending out a survey (there is a copy enclosed at the end of the paper). The survey was sent out to my friends from high school and work (since I am new at UMass, and I really don’t know anyone). Seven girls and five guys received the survey, all between the ages of eighteen to seventy-one. On the survey I asked questions like “when you drink coffee, how do you feel, or when you miss a meal. How do you feel?” The feedback I got was usually in a simple one-word answer like “good” or “hungry”. This survey flopped. Nothing actually proved or disproved my hypothesis.
In order to obtain better results, I decided to revises the survey I sent out, but how could it be done without giving away my topic? After much thought, I decided to just give the topic straight out. I asked the same group of...