^^ been thinking along the same lines myself, without having done much research on it.

I eat quite well but I am not too strict with my diet. I try to stick to fresh food when I can (fruits and vegies, although living where I do this is quite expensive). I'll use premade pastry, chips and frozen vegies on occasion (as in less than fortnightly).

I feel the shops are encouraging laziness with preprepped food. Some foods I cant even get in their whole form regularly (spinach is a good example of this, I can rarely find it in a bunch, I have to go for bagged stuff that is twice the price and doesnt last as long). It worries me the amount of packaging they use and how quickly the produce goes off when they have it pre cut. I would never trust things that say "prewashed", wash it yourself!

When I was first learning to cook I would use things in jars, now I rarely do, besides curry paste - yet to learn how to make my homemade one taste as good as those in the jars and I dont think many of them have too many nasties in it.

The gluten free craze is a load of bull. Humans do not need gluten free unless there is an absolute allergy to it. It has zero health benefits to those that are able to digest gluten. Just wasting your money. Those that report improvement usually have had a terrible diet before hand.

Dairy is important to good health too, and again unless their is an allergy to it, it is not particularly good to avoid it. Unless you are getting sufficient calcium from other sources (and I do not mean pills, it is much better to get it from food rather than supplements).

The hardest part of eating healthy is the shopping for it. Its more of a hit to my hip pocket trying to buy fresh unprocessed food all of the time. Processed food is cheaper and there is much more of it available. Cooking is a great mindful activity and it is useful to know how.

I know that the processed food here is not nearly as bad as that in the US, it is frightening what they have in some of their foods and no wonder there are so many people reporting problems.

I have seen first hand the effect of a good diet can have on autistic children, so it is no surprise to me that there are many in the world having mood issues in relation to their terrible diets. It should be one of the first things your doctors target, especially if you are overweight, before turning to medications that can cause more weight issues.