Extreme Cuisine: I asked a friend recently what made him so happy and, raising his glass, he said: because I've decided the only other option is despair. The glass in question was more than half empty but here was a man determined to turn it to his advantage.
People often ask what they can take, by which they mean which supplement, to help mitigate the depressing effects of our conflict-riven times. Anything laced with arsenic is the easy answer. But we are not here for easy answers.
The basic principle of extreme cuisine is that food rather than medicine or supplements can be used as the first line of attack against illness, either to prevent or cure. Because feeling good sets the scene for all health, food ought to have an enduring, beneficial effect on how we feel.
In making the case for supplements though, the alternative or complementary health lobby skews the debate. Food not pills are the answer.
This is an issue we collectively refuse to face, preferring to see food either as a regular ritual in which the stomach is mechanically refilled or as an occasion for indulgence. Instead of seeking well-being at dinner time, commercial interests perhaps as insidious as big pharma encourage us to look for a dubious kind of completion through supplements. Supplements though, just like medicines, delay our day of reckoning with appropriate food.
Supplements have become bad as a principle, bad as an option of first resort, as bad as medicine in fact - a sign of failure. None of that should mean they rather than pharmaceuticals should be suppressed.
When the Klingons finally invade planet Earth, they'll waste the first decade trying to figure out why homo sapiens could not function without pills. The gastronomically gifted Klingon will hold up these little poppers and even with X-ray eyes fail to see the attraction. The scale of medication in Western society through medicine and supplements and the scale of resources given over to its dubious research and manufacture will then be held up to ridicule.
Eating properly, on the other hand, requires only the same intelligence and commitment to learning that it takes to understand the impact of supplements or the chemistry of pills.
Combining food properly helps ease its passage through the body, makes fewer demands on the principle digestive organs, the stomach, bowel, liver and pancreas, and contributes to a good micro-environment. The main rules, that no two proteins should be eaten at the same meal, and that proteins and carbohydrates should not be taken together at all, are there to be broken but when observed make a real difference to the burden that food puts us under three times a day.
Apart from efficient plumbing, certain foods have a cheering effect. Grains contain L-tryptophan, an amino acid that helps in the production of serotonin, the human happiness compound. All those on the Atkins diet might note that L-tryptophan is mostly available in carbohydrates. Omega-rich foods contain eicospentaeonoic acid (EPA), another contributor to good mood that is now a pill popper's favourite.
The availability of both to the body is low because of western diets, but the shortcoming should be addressed through the weekly shopping list. EPA can be found in flaxseed which, lightly milled, is an interesting additive for sauces, for example, pesto.
Detoxing in some form undoubtedly helps to lift depression. Even the leading advocates of wholesome diets argue that no cure is complete without a detox. They just mean something different from what Carol Vorderman means by it.
Detoxing is a continuous process based on ingredients that are pleasant and have a purgative effect. The reasoning behind detoxing is that harmful bacteria arise in and contribute to a continuously diseased internal environment. While specific medicines might eliminate or suppress harmful bacteria, they do nothing to address the deteriorating state of our digestion. And bad digestion weighs on the mind.
Surprising though it may seem, an effective choice for mild depression is vinegar. Vinegar, the fermented rather than distilled type (we choose cider vinegar,) used to be a more substantial part of our diets and traditionally the cook of the house used it to cleanse food. Fermented vinegar therefore became by default a daily supplement.
Think back a generation and no salad, indeed no raw food, would have reached the table without a vinegar bath first. Vinegar has a purgative effect on bacteria and parasites. Having tried the treatment I can vouch for its efficacy. It raises not just the spirits but also hoots of laughter, not from me but from my wife, who was watching my face before and after sampling a spoonful.
Vinegar is an under-utilised food brimming with the qualities that in a momentary lapse we might call medicinal but which are in fact the essence of real food. Raw garlic is a good purgative as is parsley. Both help to suppress fungi and eliminate parasites, improve the internal environment, and relieve the sense of burden many of us operate under. Put the pills away, begin every meal with a few leaves of parsley, revisit vinegar, crack that flax, and take no notice of people who hate the smell of garlic.
You're not asking to kiss them all. If you are, then why complain about depression? You, sir, are a fraud.
• Haydn Shaughnessy lives in West Cork. His Extreme Cuisine: Notes on the Nature of Nurture, Odour and Natural Purgatory has been lost somewhere on the N71.