My Go To Smoothie Recipe

Introduction to Mood-Boosting Smoothie 0:00

Try to feeling blah. Let's whip up a mood boosting masterpiece with this easy to make dark chocolate smoothie that you can make every day. Hello, I'm Dr. Uma, your mood food expert and welcome to my channel. I am a nutritional psychiatrist as chef, a nutrition biologist and I teach at Harvard. As a Nutritional Psychiatrist, what I do is fuse my knowledge of the brain, health and food to help my patients and students and hopefully you now that's watching this channel! I am also a national and international bestselling author of two books about mood and food.

Gut-Brain Connection and Inflammation 0:34

If you watched my previous videos, you already know about the connection between the gut and the brain. As a short recap, this connection shows that what you eat affects the health of your brain If You frequently eat less healthy foods like ultra processed foods, junk foods and fast foods with a lot of added sugars, You will also realize that these are toxic to the gut and cause inflammation. The inflammation is the body's reaction to fighting off these toxins. Imagine if you eat unhealthy foods daily, then the inflammation becomes long term.

Long term inflammation in the guts leads to neuro inflammation of the brain. Brain inflammation weakens your mental well-being. So, how can you avoid neuroinflammation is to eat foods that help to lower inflammation and by doing so, you will also get to improve your mental well-being. And as the title of this video says, I will be sharing with you a recipe that you can follow every day or as often as you like. Using foods, that are healthy like walnuts, avocado, a tiny touch of honey and dark chocolate, these are components that helps produce inflammation,

Ingredients for the Dark Chocolate Smoothie 1:44

and help symptoms of depression. Are you ready? Let's get straight to the smoothie recipe, which you can do in just a few minutes. What you need for this recipe is about a cup of unsweetened plant-based milk or milk of your choice, my preference is hemp milk, a tablespoon of walnuts, one scoop of a plain protein powder of choice I like a pea protein or whey protein, a tablespoon of ground flax seeds, 1 teaspoon of organic instant coffee powder, one teaspoon cacao powder a teaspoon honey and a small piece of ripe avocado.

Place all of these ingredients in a blender with ¼ cup of ice cubes and blend. Add more water or ice if you want your smoothie slightly thinner or if it ends up too thick. If you're serving more than 2, just double or triple the quantity depending on how many people you are serving. Sip and enjoy.

Blending and Serving the Recipe 2:46

This smoothie is a delicious brain food that you don't have to feel guilty about enjoying. After trying the recipe, let me know what you think by sharing it in the comments. If you'd like to know more about the science of your mood and food, check the link in description below and download my free mini ebook. The recipe is also linked in the description if you want more recipes for boosting your mood.

Resources and Closing Remarks 3:14

You can check out both my books, This is Your Brain on Food and Calm Your Mind with Food, each of which have an entire chapter on mood food recipes. Try them out and see you in my next video.