Everything is more difficult when our mental and physical health are failing. There are things we can do about that and things we cannot. I try to focus on what I can control.
Eating a kiwi is where I start.
For years I’ve asked myself how what I eat affects how I think, how I feel, and how much energy I have for the people I love and the work I dedicate my professional life towards. It turns out those are all the same question.
Your gut produces more than ninety percent of your body’s serotonin. Serotonin, the molecule that regulates mood, sleep, cognition, and the felt sense that you can do things. Nearly all antidepressants are meant to impact serotonin production, regulation, or reuptake.
Bacteria living in your digestive system manufacture it. Those bacteria eat one thing above all else: fiber. Feed them and they work. Starve them and they can’t. Right now, nearly every American is starving them.
The typical American eats sixteen grams of fiber per day. The government recommends twenty-five to thirty-eight. The largest combined analysis ever conducted on the subject, published in The Lancet in 2019, pulled together 135 million person-years of data from 185 studies and found that the relationship between how much fiber people ate and how often they got sick or died showed no plateau. More kept paying off with no upper limit in sight.
The researchers concluded that twenty-five to twenty-nine grams per day should serve as a floor, with additional benefits likely at higher intakes. An estimated ninety-five percent of American adults and children do not consume even the recommended amount. Our ancestors ate as much as one hundred grams a day. We eat a sixth of that and wonder why we feel terrible.
People with diabetes who increased their fiber from nineteen to thirty-five grams daily saw fourteen fewer deaths per thousand participants.
Stephen O’Keefe, a gut doctor at the University of Pittsburgh, took this further. He also noticed that colon cancer strikes African Americans at a rate of sixty-five per hundred thousand while rural South Africans with similar genetics develop it at fewer than five per hundred thousand. The difference turned out to be diet. Rural Africans eat fifty to one hundred twenty grams of fiber daily. O’Keefe ran a controlled experiment: he switched the diets of twenty African Americans and twenty rural South Africans for two weeks. The Americans ate a high-fiber, low-fat African-style diet. The Africans ate a Western diet. In fourteen days, the Americans’ early warning signs of cancer improved dramatically, and the Africans’ got worse.
At the study’s start, nearly half the American participants had polyps, the growths that progress to cancer. None of the Africans did. Two weeks of eating differently began reversing the damage. O’Keefe has stated publicly that USDA fiber recommendations fall short and that fifty grams per day represents a more appropriate target.
A U.S. study of adults with metabolic syndrome found that the highest fiber consumers had thirty-nine percent lower risk of dying from heart disease, comparable to what statins achieve.
Colorectal cancer is now the number one cancer killer of Americans under fifty.
A 2024 combined analysis of sixty-four studies covering 3.5 million people found that the highest fiber consumers had twenty-three percent lower risk of dying from anything, twenty-six percent lower risk of dying from heart disease, and twenty-two percent lower risk of dying from cancer. Fiber from nuts and seeds alone reduced heart disease death risk by forty-three percent. Multiple independent analyses of nut consumption, collectively covering hundreds of thousands of people, have found that the highest nut consumers have twenty-one to thirty percent lower heart disease death compared to the lowest consumers. For context, statins reduce heart disease death by twenty to thirty percent. The research on this is extensive: a handful of almonds competes with the pills your doctor fights to get you to take.
And here is where it connects directly to how you feel and whether you can function. A combined analysis of eighteen studies found that higher fiber intake correlated with ten percent lower depression risk in adults and fifty-seven percent lower risk in adolescents, with each additional five grams of daily fiber reducing risk by another five percent.
A separate study of over three thousand adults found that the people who ate the most fiber had thirty-three percent lower anxiety and twenty-nine percent lower psychological distress than the people who ate the least. The mechanism runs straight through the gut: bacteria break down fiber into chemicals that tell your gut to make more serotonin. Starve the bacteria, lose the serotonin, and your mood, motivation, and the feeling that what you do matters all deteriorate together.
A study of over twenty-four thousand American adults found that mushroom consumers had lower odds of depression independent of all other dietary and demographic factors.
Then there are mushrooms.
I’ve been eating them regularly for years, because the research kept giving me reasons to. A Penn State analysis of seventeen cancer studies found that the highest mushroom consumers had thirty-four percent lower total cancer risk. The data showed that eating just eighteen grams per day, roughly one small button mushroom, correlated with forty-five percent lower cancer risk.
But the real story is a molecule called ergothioneine. Humans cannot make it. We can only get it from food, and the primary dietary source is mushrooms.
Here is what makes ergothioneine remarkable: we carry a dedicated transporter protein whose entire job is pulling this one molecule from food and distributing it to the parts of the body taking the most damage. Evolution built us a delivery system for a compound found almost exclusively in one food.
Seniors who consumed mushrooms more than twice per week had fifty-seven percent reduced odds of mild cognitive impairment.
Our blood levels of ergothioneine decline after age sixty, and that decline tracks with the brain slowing down. Some researchers now call it a longevity vitamin. A Swedish study following over three thousand people for twenty-one years found that higher blood levels of ergothioneine correlated with fifteen percent lower coronary disease risk, twenty-one percent lower heart disease death, and fourteen percent lower risk of dying from anything.
So fiber feeds the bacteria that produce the serotonin that regulates your mood and your sense that you can act in the world. Ergothioneine protects the brain cells that use it. Two different fronts in the same war: keeping the brain chemistry running that allows you to function as the person you want to be.
I suspect, and the data supports this even if no researcher has stated it directly, that much of the benefits we attribute to vegetarianism are actually a fiber effect. A study measuring intake across diet types found that omnivores consume about twenty-three grams of fiber per day, vegetarians consume thirty-seven, and vegans consume forty-seven. The small fraction of Americans who meet recommended fiber intake are nearly all vegetarian or vegan. And nearly every health benefit attributed to these diets, lower heart disease, lower cancer rates, lower depression, longer life, maps directly onto the documented benefits of high fiber intake.
When someone goes vegetarian and says they feel amazing, the most likely explanation is that they accidentally started eating enough fiber for the first time in their lives, and their gut bacteria finally had the raw material to do their job.
None of this requires a lifestyle overhaul. My daily routine, the dates, kiwis, apple, nuts, and mushrooms, gets me close to thirty grams of fiber before I cook a single meal, plus the only meaningful dietary source of ergothioneine. Add a cup of black beans or lentils at one meal and I pass forty grams. Add them at two meals and I am over fifty. The number that sounds clinical and extreme turns out to be some fruit, some nuts, and a bowl of lentil soup.
The consistency matters as much as the content. Research on long-term dietary success consistently shows that people who maintain healthy changes eat the same core foods day after day. Phillippa Lally’s landmark study on habit formation found that the median time for a new daily behavior to become automatic was sixty-six days. After that threshold, skipping the behavior takes more effort than doing it.
The National Weight Control Registry, tracking over five thousand people who maintained significant weight loss long-term, found that successful participants maintained a consistent eating pattern across weekdays and weekends. Keep the base stable. Vary one meal. The routine carries you. Each of these changes is simple, easy, beneficial, compounding. Any single day of eating this way does not transform your life. A year of it does.
I call this “deliberate, self-directed habit formation toward a preferred state of being or outcome.” My preferred states are resilient and kind. My preferred outcomes are fighting fascism and maintaining healthy relationships with the people I love.
Those four things require stable brain chemistry that sixteen grams of fiber and zero ergothioneine cannot provide. Resilience requires a brain that recovers from stress instead of collapsing under it. Kindness requires mood regulation that does not depend on everything going right. Fighting fascism requires sustained energy, clear thinking, and the felt conviction that doing the right thing matters whether we win or not. Healthy relationships require all of the above, every day, for years.
We do not defeat authoritarianism by starting with the biggest fight. We defeat it by building the version of ourselves that can keep showing up. That process starts, literally and chemically, with what we put in our mouths at breakfast. An apple costs about sixty cents. A kiwi costs about the same. A serving of mushrooms costs about a dollar or two. It’s all cheaper than McDonalds.
Today’s call to action is simple. Eat a kiwi. Or some mushrooms, or an apple, or have a few dates. Recognize that doing so is step one toward pushing back against all the news that breaks your heart, all the needless suffering. You get healthier and the world gets healthier with you. We build the strongest, most resilient, most impactful version of ourselves by showing up daily for ourselves, our loved ones, our community, and our world.
Fast Facts: Further Reading
Each 10 grams of daily fiber reduced colorectal cancer risk by ten percent.
A review of sixteen combined analyses found the highest fiber consumers had fifteen to nineteen percent lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
Each 8 gram increase in daily fiber reduced deaths, heart disease, and diabetes by five to twenty-seven percent.
Replacing one serving per day of red or processed meat with mushrooms was associated with thirty-five percent lower risk of dying from any cause.
The World Cancer Research Fund rates the evidence linking fiber to lower colorectal cancer risk as “convincing,” its highest category.
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I’m working on the fiber but good to hear it’ll help me fight fascism! Thanks for the nudge.
This is important because even those of us who know these things get lazy. I love that you've linked taking responsibility for our physical/emotional being to being socially responsible!