Hello and welcome to Zoe Recap, where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast episodes to help you improve your health.

Today we're exploring the impact that ultra-processed foods have on our brain.

We often think of nutrition in terms of physical health, things like obesity, heart disease or diabetes. However, what we eat also plays a crucial

role in our mental health, influencing mood, cognition, even our risk for conditions like depression.

So what can we learn from the studies that have looked into the connection between food and thought?

I'm joined by world-leading professor of nutritional psychiatry, Felice Jacker,

to explore this fascinating link and discuss how we can make smarter food choices to keep our minds

sharp and healthy. Neuroscientists discovered probably the end of the 1990s is that we have

this region of the brain called

the hippocampus. Now, it's only tiny. They're two little bits that sit together in the

middle of the brain. And Felice is holding her, for those of you just on audio, she's

like very small. So you're saying, there's like, probably a lot smaller than that. Like, really small.

But they, this hippocampal area of the brain seems to be very important in learning and memory.

It also seems to be really important in mental health.

So there are particular proteins that grow new neurons in the hippocampus.

So the hippocampus can actually grow and shrink over the life course.

And is that unusual?

Is that?

It's the only bit of the brain that we know of that does this, where you can actually grow new

neurons and it can get larger.

So the rest of my brain, I am right, basically, it's not growing anymore.

All that's happening is it's sort of, I'm losing capacity.

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