7 Healthy Food Rules for ADHD Families: What to Eat, What to Avoid
A well-rounded ADD diet can have a powerfully positive effect on your cognition, mood, memory, and behavior. The wrong diet can aggravate ADHD symptoms. Here’s what you should (and should not) be eating to help your brain and body.
An ADD Diet: Healthy Food for ADHD Brains
Everything you put on the end of your fork matters. It is critical to make sure that the food you eat is loaded with nutrients that your body is able to properly digest and absorb. Food impacts neurotransmitter levels of serotonin and dopamine, which play a big role in how you feel and perceive the world.
Serotonin, for instance, helps manage, sleep, and appetite; when levels drop, the result can be low mood, and negativity. This may be why we crave carbohydrates such as pasta, bread, and chocolate, all of which raise serotonin levels temporarily. Complex carbs, such as apples and sweet potatoes, work the same magic, but don’t set you up for more cravings. Likewise, dopamine helps to increase focus and motivation. Eating small amounts of protein throughout the day can boost dopamine and stabilize blood sugar.
A little information goes a long way to help equip you with the tools to make good choices about your diet — which is why we at the Amen Clinic created seven simple food guidelines to optimize the functioning of your brain and body.
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ADD Diet Rule 1: Eat high-quality calories, but not too many.
It’s not as simple as calories in, calories out. Some calories adversely affect your hormones, your taste buds, and your health. Eating sugar and processed food, even in small amounts, leads to craving more food and feeling less energetic. You can eat more if you eat healthy, high-quality food that gives you energy and turns on the hormones that affect metabolism.
ADD Diet Rule 2: Drink plenty of water.
Your brain is 80 percent water. Anything that dehydrates it, such as too much caffeine or alcohol, impairs your cognition and judgment. Drink plenty of water every day.
To know whether you are drinking enough water for your brain, a good general rule is to drink half your weight in ounces daily. If you are significantly obese, don’t drink more than 120 ounces a day. If you are an athlete, make sure to replenish electrolytes after the game or working out. Cutting out sugary drinks and juice eliminates about 400 calories a day from the average American diet. That allows you to either eat more healthy food or eliminate a lot of calories if you are trying to shed pounds.
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ADD Diet Rule 3: Eat lean protein.
It is important to start each day with protein to boost your focus and concentration. Protein helps balance your blood sugar, increases focus, and gives your brain the necessary building blocks for brain health. Think of it as medicine, and take it in small doses. However, consuming large amounts of protein at one time can cause oxidative stress which can make you feel unwell .1 It can also lead to elevated blood lipids and heart disease, as many high-protein foods are high in total and saturated fat.
Great protein sources include wild fish, skinless turkey or chicken, beans (eat them like a condiment, not too often or too much), raw nuts, and vegetables such as broccoli and spinach. I use spinach instead of lettuce in my salads for a nutrition boost. Protein powders can also be a good source but read the labels. Whey protein contains casein, which is an excitotoxin in the brain and can be overly stimulating for some people. Many companies put sugar and other unhealthful ingredients in their powders. My personal preference is pea and rice protein blends.
ADD Diet Rule 4: Eat smart carbs.
Carbohydrates are not the enemy; they are essential to your health. Bad carbohydrates — ones that have been stripped of nutritional value, such as sugar and simple carbs — are the problem. Eat carbohydrates that do not spike your blood sugar and are high in fiber, such as those found in vegetables and fruits, like blueberries and apples.
Experts recommend eating 25 to 35 grams of fiber a day, but studies suggest that most people fall short of that. You can add fiber to smoothies but don’t use grain-based fiber. My favorite types of fiber supplements are inulin or glucomannan. When reading a food label, you want to look for more than 5 grams of fiber and fewer than 5 grams of sugar per serving.
Sugar is not your friend. It increases inflammation in your body, which can impact the brain, as well. Sugar gets you hooked, and may even play a role in aggression.
ADD Diet Rule 5: Focus on healthy fats.
Essential fatty acids are called “essential” for a reason. The solid weight of your brain is 60 percent fat (after all the water is removed). When the medical establishment recommended that we eliminate fat from our diets, we got fat.
You want to eliminate bad fats from your meals — trans fats, fried fats, and fat from cheaply raised, industrially farmed animals that are fed corn and soy. Fats found in pizza, ice cream, and cheeseburgers disrupt the hormones that send signals to the brain to tell it you’re full so you don’t stop. Focus on healthy fats, especially those that contain omega 3 fatty acids, inlcuding salmon, sardines, avocados, walnuts, chia seeds, and dark green leafy vegetables.
ADD Diet Rule 6: Eat from the rainbow.
I’m not talking about Skittles, jelly beans, or M&Ms. Nor do I mean grape jelly, mustard, or ketchup. These highly processed, sugar-filled foods have no place in your pantry if you are trying to use food to heal your brain.
Eat natural foods that reflect the colors of the rainbow, such as blueberries, pomegranates, yellow squash, and red bell peppers. They boost the antioxidant levels in your body and help keep your brain young.
ADD Diet Rule 7: Make sure your food is clean.
It is critical to know and understand what you are eating. You are not only what you eat, you are also what the animals you eat ate. In addition, eliminate food additives, preservatives, and artificial dyes and sweeteners. To do so, start reading food labels. If you do not know what is in a food item or product, don’t eat it.
Whenever you can, eat organically grown or raised foods. Pesticides used in commercial farming can accumulate in your brain and body, even though the levels in each food may be low. Also, eat hormone-free, antibiotic-free meat from animals that are free-range and grass-fed. Grass-fed bison and beef are 30 percent lower in palmitic acid — the saturated fat associated with heart disease — than industrially raised beef (fed corn, soy, and pharmaceuticals, and restricted in movement).
Fish is a great source of healthy protein and fat. The larger the fish, the more mercury it probably contains, so go for smaller varieties. From the safe fish choices, eat a variety of fish, preferably those highest in omega-3s, like wild Alaskan salmon, sardines, anchovies, and Pacific halibut.
Be mindful of pesticide levels in fruits and vegetables. Foods with the highest levels are: celery, peaches, apples, blueberries, sweet bell peppers, cucumbers, cherries, collard greens, kale, grapes, green beans, strawberries, nectarines, spinach, potatoes.
Excerpted from the Healing ADD Through Food Cookbook, by TANA AMEN, RN, BSN. Copyright 2013.
1 Gu, Chunmei, and Huiyong Xu. (2010). “Effect of Oxidative Damage Due to Excessive Protein Ingestion on Pancreas Function in Mice.” International Journal of Molecular Sciences, vol. 11, no. 11, pp. 4591–4600., doi:10.3390/ijms111145
