World view of food and mood

The lunch time seminar's aim was to discuss how what we eat affects our mood and the importance of food being eaten socially. A healthy diet is essental for work/life balance and there needs to be a whole body approach to eating; we need to feed the mind as well as the body. The day celebrated the theme of food for the brain and what we can learn from different cultural approaches. The event also aimed to link urban and rural food projects and businesses as a way of developing future partnerships that could enable farmers within West Midlands to sell directly to inner city Black and MInority Ethnic (BME) communities.

"I'm glad I came as I have lots of ideas around this for our parents. This will give me impetus to start something new and exciting"

Adjust the Balance and Equal were co-sponsors of the event along with My Time, Shared Voices (a charity currently promoting faith and food projects) Rodbaston Agricultural College (Staffordshire), AXIS (Birmingham BME's mental health support team) and Bakes Ltd (a Birmingham based catering company specialising in African Caribbean cusine and nutritional eating). Michael Lilley of My Time opened the event with a talk on how brain chemicals influence how we think, feel and behave.

Michael told delegates "Work/life balance involves healthy eating, and we need food businesses to encourage us with new ideas and natural products. We need to encourage those businesses to develop work/life balance envrioments for their employees as well"

The day involved three workshops presented by Carol Cadogan of Bakes Ltd, Anna Purna (a Asian women's catering social enterprise), and Julie White and Nick of Rodbaston Agricultural College's Food Business project. Carol showed examples of African Carribean recipes. Anna Purna and AXIS provided an extensive display of spices and demonstrated how exotic recipes can be put together. Nick and Julie of Rodbaston College gave a presentation titled Food and Mood, promoting links between producers, suppliers and retailers that benefit all. A member of Victim's Support was a particpant in Anna Purna's Workshopp and commented "the ideas in the workshop will enable organisations like mine to set up something similar and help vulnerable people with depression to have a purpose in order to bring about change in their lives"

Particpants represented many divisions of the National Health Service with a large delegation from Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Trust, other public sector organisations, local community groups and businesses.

An employee from Sure Start summed up the day "I'm glad I came as I have lots of ideas around this for our parents. This will give me impetus to start something new and exciting"