Healthy food for Union County

A Creston group is wondering if the food they eat affects how they feel.

The Union County Food Coalition met June 1 to discuss their goals and learn about how food affects one’s mood.

Crossroads counselor Joseph Breshears and personal trainer and CrossFit TYL owner Chris Doster shared their presentation, “Food and Mood: The Intersection of Diet and Mental Health.” They hope to spread the knowledge from their presentation to companies and schools around Union County.

“We’re partnering together to raise awareness about this topic because people don’t think about how my is diet impacting my mental health,” Breshears said. “We want to do that, raise that type of awareness, as well as motivate some sort of action in your personal life and move the paradigm of how we conceive of our well-being.”

Breshears stressed the importance of micronutrients like Vitamin B in one’s diet.

“Vitamin B deficiency has a very similar presentation of symptoms to depression,” he said. “Shortages in various types of vitamins, all types of vitamin B, lead to thinking problems, irritability, mood swings, depression, psychosis, fatigue.”

Doster explained Vitamin B is not the only micronutrient that affects one’s mood.

“The micronutrients that we need are very important for reasons like [Breshears] was mentioning: mental health, energy levels, all these sorts of things,” Doster said. “The micronutrients that we need, Vitamin B being one very important one, along with lots of other ones, like Iron, Vitamin C, Magnesium.”

Doster said the best way to get these micronutrients are through single-ingredient foods, such as with produce. When it comes to grocery shopping, he recommends that one “shops around the edges of the grocery store” to find the healthiest options.

After the presentation, members of the food coalition talked of how to fit healthier options into their projects.

“Some calories are better than no calories,” Union County Public Health director Zach Woods said. “So what you get at the food pantry is fine, but when you look at the nutritional value, it’s really hard, because that contributes to where we’re missing some key [nutrients].”

Salem Lutheran pastor Evan McVann said this had been running through his mind with the recent addition of his church’s new food shelf.

“When we stocked it last afternoon, I was thinking, what’s exactly in there based on this conversation,” McVann said. “A lot of canned fruits and vegetables... When I’m thinking of what’s in there, it’s actually not as bad as what I thought it would be.”

The coalition also discussed the possibility of a community refrigerator as a way to get more produce and fresh food to the hungry of Union County.

“Premade meals can go in the community fridge, the produce can go in the community fridge,” Union County Food Coalition co-founder Michelle Wilson said. “If we could find a location that would be open to a community fridge, that would be one more access point that would give folks access to fresher food.”

Wilson plans to look into grants to help fund a possible community refrigerator in Union County.