What you eat has a huge effect on how you feel. Big Mac and fries washed down with a large Coke might taste delicious, but it won't help to make you happy. Refined white flour, saturated fat and sugar will set up a spike in your blood sugar levels which will be followed by a sharp drop. You will feel excited and "up" but this is followed by a deeper "down".
Jamie Oliver's school meals campaign showed us that giving kids good food can help behavior in schols. He took away the pizza and chips and replaced it with salads and vegetables, bad behaviour and tantrums were massively reduced. Similair experiments have been done in prisons in the US with similair results. You THINK like what you EAT.
You can read more about this in Potatoes Not Prozac. Basically, bad foods like pizzas, burgers, chips and coke give you a big up - followed by a big down... Trying to keep yourself on the upswing means eating more and more sugary foods - and leads to obesity and depression.
Which all sounds very grim. The good news is that good, happy food is NICE! It just takes a bit of getting used to, you need to experiment and find good food that suits you. Learning to cook new things is fun, so the benefits go on and on. You'll feel healthier and live longer, you get a sense of achievement from learning new skills and you will even save money by cooking from scratch. So ditch the take-aways and the ready meals and eat yourself happier.
Here are a few recipes to get you started. I'm not a chef, I'm not even a cook - anybody could make these, they are cheap vegetarian friendly and tasty.
The key is to eat a low GI diet, here are some recipe sites:
http://www.the-gi-diet.org/
http://www.lowgidiet.net/pages/lowgirecipes.shtml
http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/collections/low+gi
Think you can do better - send us your low GI recipes to info@makeeverybodyhappy.org
If you get into a blind panic when you look at the kitchen, Jamie Oliver has set up a brilliant site to get Britain cooking:
http://www.jamiesministryoffood.com/
He could do with some more veggie dishes but he hasn't done too bad for a southerner!