Nutritional Psychology: Understanding the Relationship between Food and Mental Health
by Dr. Andrea Cook, PhD, and Dr. Jennifer Champion, DCN (2025)
Overview
This textbook provides readers with an overview of the field of Nutritional Psychology, with explanatory examples of how science has come to the conclusion that food and nutritional status affect mental health. It teaches students how food affects us, the factors involved in how and why we eat, and the environmental influences that shape our eating behavior. Currently, mental health and medical practitioners get little to no training in nutrition, and clinical nutritionists get little to no training in psychology. This textbook can help fill this gap in training by creating an easily adoptable course that can be offered during the undergraduate and graduate college years for both psychology and nutrition students.
Table of Contents
Section I: Foundations of Psychology
Chapter 1: Psychology Basics
Chapter 2: Overview of Common Mental Health Disorders
Chapter 3: Mental Health Treatment as Usual
Section II: Foundations of Nutrition
Chapter 4: Nutrition Basics
Chapter 5: Microbiome and Mental Health
Chapter 6: The Impact of Hormones on Mental Health
Section III: The Emergence of Nutritional Psychology
Chapter 7: Evidence for Integrating Nutrition to Treat Mental Illness
Chapter 8: Using a Nutritional Approach to Treat Disease
Section IV: Nutrition and Mental Health Challenges
Chapter 9: Risk Factors That Impact Mental Health
Chapter 10: Psychosocial Eating
Section V: Eating Behaviors
Chapter 11: Weight Loss
Chapter 12: Eating Disorders
Chapter 13: Food Addiction
Section VI: Where Do We Go from Here?
Chapter 14: The Politics of Food
Chapter 15: Making Food Decisions
Chapter 16: Self-Care
Detailed Table of Contents
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