Rafael Fernández-Demeneghi1*†
Julieta Sánchez-Bizama2†
Alma Gabriela Martínez-Moreno1
Isidro Vargas-Moreno1
Rodrigo Ramirez-Rodriguez3
Abraham Puga-Olguín4
Erick Yael Fernández-Barradas1- 1Instituto de Investigaciones en Comportamiento Alimentario y Nutrición, Universidad de Guadalajara, Ciudad Guzmán, Mexico
- 2Departamento de Ciencias de la Salud y Biomédicas, Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad Loyola Andalucía, Sevilla, Spain
- 3Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Ciudad de México, Mexico
- 4Programa Investigadoras e Investigadores por México, SECIHTI-Centro de EcoAlfabetización y Diálogo de Saberes, Universidad Veracruzana, Xalapa, Mexico
1 Introduction
The escalating global burden of mental health disorders, with anxiety and depression now among the principal causes of disability affecting over one in eight individuals, constitutes a critical public health crisis (1). Although these conditions emerge from a complex interplay of genetic, psychosocial, and environmental factors, there is increasing consensus that lifestyle interventions—especially dietary patterns—represent modifiable targets for both prevention and treatment (2). Within this context, Nutritional Psychiatry has emerged as an essential interdisciplinary field, elucidating the bidirectional pathways through which diet shapes brain function and emotional wellbeing. Still, contemporary therapeutic frameworks must evolve beyond a reductionist focus on isolated nutrients to address the fundamental determinants of mental health—how, when, and why we eat (3–5). Eating behaviors involve complex emotional, cognitive, and bodily processes influencing diet, stress, and mental health, but are often overlooked in clinical research (6, 7).
Mindfulness and mindful eating offer behavioral strategies uniquely positioned to address this gap by cultivating present-moment awareness and attunement to internal and external cues. Accumulating neuroscientific evidence suggests that mindfulness-based interventions recalibrate reward processing, enhance neurocognitive flexibility, and facilitate stress regulation (8–10). Notably, mindful eating has demonstrated efficacy in improving eating behaviors related to overweight and obesity, conditions closely linked with mental health disorders, by reducing emotional and binge eating and improving self-regulation (5, 6). Neuroimaging data indicate that mindful eating can modulate the salience of food cues, dampen activity in the midbrain reward pathway, and strengthen prefrontal emotion regulation networks (9, 11).
Despite promising advances, this field faces challenges including conceptual ambiguity, methodological variability, and a scarcity of long-term mechanistic studies (12, 13). This Opinion advocates that mindfulness and mindful eating can directly engage core biobehavioral mechanisms implicated in psychiatric disorders—including reward sensitivity, hedonic hunger, the gut-brain axis, and neuroplasticity. Framed within a salutogenic model prioritizing health promotion, mindful eating emerges as an accessible, low-risk approach that fosters psychological resilience and enables a paradigm shift toward holistic, personalized, and preventive mental health care.
Adopting an integrative perspective that extends beyond isolated nutrients to encompass how, why, and how much we eat, we define Mindful Eating as a multidimensional biobehavioral framework rather than a mere modification of ingestion speed. It is conceptualized as the active integration of cognitive, emotional, and interoceptive domains, characterized by non-judgmental attentiveness to the complete sensory experience and internal physiological cues of hunger and satiety. Operationally, this mechanism serves to disrupt behavioral automaticity and decouple food intake from emotional reactivity, thereby realigning dietary decision-making with metabolic homeostasis rather than hedonic reward processing.
2 Beyond nutrients: eating behavior as a therapeutic target in nutritional psychiatry
The traditional focus in nutritional psychiatry on isolated nutrients has inadvertently fostered a reductionist perspective, overlooking the complex biopsychosocial nature of eating behavior (2, 14). Eating transcends mere biochemical ingestion; it is an intricate behavior influenced by emotional, cognitive, and social contexts that together shape dietary adherence and clinical outcomes (4, 15). Overlooking these behavioral dimensions may limit the effectiveness of nutrient-centered interventions (16).
A critical flaw in many current dietary interventions is the implicit assumption of rational, linear adherence to guidelines, which overlooks how emotional states, habitual cues, and cultural scripts powerfully shape actual eating behavior. Mindful eating directly addresses this gap. By fostering heightened awareness and self-regulation, it shows preliminary promise in decoupling eating from hedonic and emotional drivers and in enhancing dietary consistency (5–7). However, well-powered, longitudinal trials are needed to elucidate its long-term impact on energy balance and metabolic health.
For nutritional psychiatry to realize its full potential, it must treat eating behavior not merely as a confounder but as a primary therapeutic target. Cultivating a mindful, positive relationship with food could empower individuals to adopt and maintain nutrient-rich diets, maximizing the preventive and therapeutic benefits of nutrition for mental health.
3 Mindfulness and mindful eating: mechanisms relevant to mental health
Mindfulness-based interventions engage complex neurobiological and behavioral pathways essential to mental health, making them promising tools in nutritional psychiatry (5, 15). These approaches recalibrate maladaptive responses to hyperpalatable food cues, promote behavioral flexibility, and engage brain circuits involved in reward and stress regulation, thus offering pathways to reshape eating patterns and enhance psychological wellbeing (7, 9) (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. Core biobehavioral mechanisms of mindfulness and mindful eating in nutritional psychiatry. An integrative mechanistic framework illustrating how mindful eating promotes mental health. This proposed model integrates the neurobiological modulation of reward and executive control circuits; the physiological regulation of the gut-brain and stress axes; and the cognitive enhancement of self-regulatory capacities. These synergistic pathways are posited to converge, thereby underpinning psychological resilience. Innovatively, the framework extends to a socio-ecological dimension, suggesting that the cultivation of intentional eating bridges individual wellbeing with the broader principles of planetary health.
3.1 Hedonic hunger and food reward regulation
Hedonic hunger refers to eating for pleasure rather than metabolic need, mediated by dopamine-driven reward pathways in the striatum and midbrain (17). Mindful eating appears to attenuate these hypersensitive circuits by encouraging nonjudgmental observation of cravings, decoupling conditioned food cues from compulsive eating, and modulating reward signaling (9, 11). Neuroimaging shows reduced mesolimbic reward activation and improved executive control, consistent with enhanced top-down regulation (9, 10).
3.2 Food addiction and emotional eating
Mindful eating also holds significant promise for mitigating compulsive and addiction-like eating patterns, which share neurobiological substrates with substance use disorders. By fostering cognitive decentering—the ability to observe thoughts and urges as transient mental events—mindfulness-based approaches disrupt the cycle of emotional eating and impulsive consumption, thereby facilitating sustainable behavioral change (5–7).
3.3 Gut-brain axis and inflammation
The influence of mindful eating extends to the gut-brain axis. While precise mechanisms remain under investigation, evidence suggests this relationship is mediated largely by autonomic modulation via the vagus nerve (18, 19). Chronic stress and distracted eating heighten sympathetic tone, which can increase intestinal permeability and alter gut motility. Conversely, by fostering a parasympathetic state during ingestion, mindful eating promotes vagal tone, creating physiological conditions that favor more diverse and resilient gut microbiota profiles. This includes an increased abundance of taxa such as Bacteroides and Lactobacilli, which produce anti-inflammatory short-chain fatty acids and support gut barrier integrity (20). Concurrently, mindfulness practice downregulates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, reducing chronic stress and lowering circulating proinflammatory cytokines that are strongly implicated in the neuroinflammation characteristic of mood disorders (21, 22). These interconnected pathways position mindful eating as a synergistic intervention that modulates both systemic and neural health. While these associations are compelling, current evidence is mainly correlational, and the direction of causality remains to be firmly established. Longitudinal studies tracking changes in both microbiota composition and psychological states following mindful eating interventions are essential to disentangle this complex bidirectional relationship.
3.4 Neuroplasticity and stress resilience
Mindfulness and mindful eating may drive adaptive neuroplastic changes that underpin lasting mental resilience, though the precise mechanisms remain an active area of investigation (23, 24). Structural MRI studies consistently report increased gray matter density and cortical thickness in brain regions critical for executive function and emotional regulation, including the prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and insula (24–26). These anatomical changes are thought to reflect enhanced dendritic arborization and synaptogenesis.
Functionally, mindfulness training systematically modulates key large-scale brain networks. It has been shown to reduce hyperactivity and connectivity within the default mode network (DMN), a system linked to mind-wandering and rumination, thereby mitigating maladaptive self-referential thought (27, 28). Simultaneously, it strengthens connectivity within the central executive and salience networks, supporting enhanced attentional control, cognitive flexibility, and emotional regulation—all core components of stress resilience (29, 30). At a molecular level, preliminary evidence links mindfulness with increased expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a key molecule for synaptic plasticity and neurogenesis (23, 31).
Collectively, these neurobiological adaptations—from cortical structure to network dynamics and molecular signaling—provide a compelling mechanistic basis for how mindfulness and mindful eating can remodel neural architecture to support healthier eating behaviors and long-term mental health (32). It is important to note that much of the foundational neuroimaging evidence for these neuroplastic changes derives from studies on general mindfulness-based interventions rather than mindful eating protocols specifically. While mindful eating shares foundational elements with general mindfulness practice, specific evidence on its impact on neuroplasticity remains limited and extrapolated mainly from broader interventions.
3.5 Planetary health diet and mental wellbeing
Exposure to green spaces improves mental health by reducing stress and depression while encouraging physical activity and social connection. This wellbeing boost complements adherence to sustainable diets like the EAT-Lancet Planetary Health Diet, which emphasizes plant-based foods and limits red meat, reducing depression risk and mortality (33–35). Mindful eating further supports intentional, health- and planet-conscious choices, strengthening the link between mental health and environmental sustainability (7, 36). Together, these factors form a holistic approach to planetary mental health. While specific dietary compositions may vary by clinical or cultural needs, the attentional quality of Mindful Eating serves as a foundational skill for sustainable behavior change.
4 Salutogenesis and mental health: a theoretical integration
Salutogenesis offers a transformative framework for mental health by focusing on factors that actively promote and sustain wellbeing (37). Central to this model is the sense of coherence, encompassing comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness (38). Mindful eating can operationalize these elements by fostering awareness of internal cues, enhancing coping with triggers, and aligning food choices with personal values. This approach transcends prescriptive dietary advice, empowering individuals to develop their own General Resistance Resources (GRRs) and navigate complex food environments with resilience (39–41).
As a scalable, low-cost intervention, mindful eating is well-suited to diverse public health settings. School-based programs employing mindful eating demonstrate promising effects in cultivating healthier relationships with food and promoting psychological resilience (42). Such initiatives exemplify salutogenic strategies that expand both individual and collective resources, fostering self-awareness, agency, and sustainability in mental health care (43)—contributing meaningfully even to planetary health goals.
5 Discussion, limitations, and future directions
Mindfulness and mindful eating are increasingly recognized as behaviorally grounded strategies with neurobiological relevance to mental health. By enhancing interoceptive awareness, fostering cognitive flexibility, and reducing emotionally driven and dysregulated eating patterns, these practices target core mechanisms implicated in psychiatric conditions—including dysregulated reward processing, chronic stress, neuroinflammation, and impaired self-regulation (5, 6, 8, 44). Despite growing interest, several conceptual and methodological limitations continue to impede their integration into clinical and public health frameworks.
A persistent challenge lies in the inconsistent operationalization of mindfulness and mindful eating. As emphasized by Mantzios, definitional variability undermines comparability across studies and obscures which elements are truly therapeutic (13). Moreover, mindful eating interacts with co-factors such as self-compassion, attentional control, and emotional context—dimensions that are rarely systematically accounted for (45, 46). There is an urgent need for standardized reporting guidelines and multidimensional frameworks that reflect this complexity while improving reproducibility.
Methodological heterogeneity also extends to intervention protocols, which vary widely in duration, delivery format (digital vs. in-person), intensity, facilitator training, and cultural contextualization. This variability complicates the synthesis of findings and the identification of active ingredients. Notably, mindfulness-based approaches may not suit all populations equally. Individuals with trauma histories, severe eating disorders, or cognitive vulnerabilities may require trauma-informed adaptations, increased clinician support, and flexible engagement strategies (6, 8).
Recent findings also point to underexplored but compelling mechanisms. Mindful eating has been linked to increased behavioral flexibility, improved reversal learning, and even enhanced alignment with sustainable food choices and pro-environmental values—suggesting a broader potential for systemic impact (10, 36). Integrating these findings into future trial designs could inform interventions that simultaneously address psychological, physiological, and ecological wellbeing.
However, while this synergy with sustainability is promising, Mindful Eating should fundamentally be understood as a diet-agnostic intervention. Its core mechanisms—specifically interoceptive awareness and impulse regulation—are equally relevant across diverse nutritional contexts and are not contingent upon specific macronutrient profiles. This distinction is particularly relevant for metabolic psychiatry, where restrictive interventions such as ketogenic diets are increasingly utilized for symptom management in conditions like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia (47). Furthermore, the universality of mindful eating extends to cultural contexts with traditionally high animal-product consumption, such as circumpolar populations. In these settings, the therapeutic utility of Mindful Eating lies not in enforcing a plant-forward standard, but in optimizing the bio-behavioral relationship with food. By enhancing sensitivity to satiety signals, it supports metabolic regulation regardless of whether the dietary pattern is plant-based or animal-based (48, 49).
To advance the field, a focused and interdisciplinary research agenda is essential. Key priorities include:
• Large-sample, longitudinal randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with active comparators, longer follow-up, and standardized outcome measures in clinically diagnosed populations.
• Mechanistic studies employing objective biomarkers, including functional and structural neuroimaging, cortisol, inflammatory cytokines, gut microbiota composition, and brain-derived neurotrophic factor, to identify mediators of effect and individual predictors of response.
• Hybrid trials combining mindful eating with dietary interventions—ranging from the Mediterranean, Milpa diet or functional food like berries (50) examining whether behavioral self-regulation enhances dietary adherence, bioavailability, or synergistic therapeutic outcomes.
• Component and mediation analyses to isolate active ingredients (e.g., formal meditation vs. informal awareness vs. interoceptive training) and explore dose–response effects.
• Implementation science research, assessing feasibility, cost-effectiveness, digital scalability, and cultural adaptability across varied settings—including schools, primary care, and public health campaigns (51).
• Personalization strategies, informed by baseline characteristics (e.g., interoceptive accuracy, trauma history, motivational readiness), to tailor interventions and enhance engagement and efficacy.
Beyond clinical application, mindful eating aligns with a salutogenic model of mental health promotion. By cultivating attentional stability, emotional regulation, and embodied awareness, it empowers individuals to develop more sustainable, intentional relationships with food—supporting resilience across diverse populations, ages, and cultural contexts. Its low risk, adaptability, and potential scalability position it as a compelling adjunct within lifestyle-based mental health frameworks.
While mindful eating is not a standalone treatment for psychiatric disorders, it represents a biologically plausible and theoretically robust tool that bridges disciplines—linking neuroscience, nutritional science, and behavioral psychology. Future work must prioritize methodological rigor, multidimensional measurement, and culturally informed design to realize its transformative potential in nutritional psychiatry fully.
Author contributions
RF-D: Project administration, Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Investigation, Resources, Conceptualization. JS-B: Writing – review & editing, Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology. AM-M: Supervision, Validation, Writing – review & editing, Project administration. IV-M: Supervision, Writing – review & editing, Validation, Investigation, Resources, Visualization. RR-R: Writing – review & editing, Conceptualization, Supervision, Validation. AP-O: Writing – review & editing, Investigation, Conceptualization, Methodology. EF-B: Validation, Resources, Supervision, Methodology, Writing – review & editing.
Funding
The author(s) declared that financial support was not received for this work and/or its publication.
Acknowledgments
Authors RF-D (CVU: 714861), IV-M (CVU: 863439), RR-R (CVU:785735), and EF-B (CVU: 821866) thank the Secretaría de Ciencia, Humanidades, Tecnología e Innovación (SECIHTI) for the support through the scholarship of Postdoctoral Stays in Mexico.
Conflict of interest
The author(s) declared that this work was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Generative AI statement
The author(s) declared that generative AI was used in the creation of this manuscript. The author(s) declare the use of generative AI in the preparation of this manuscript and assume full responsibility for its content. The generative AI tools employed (Google's Gemini and Grammarly) served exclusively as writing aids for the purpose of stylistic enhancement and ensuring grammatical accuracy. Critically, the entire conceptual framework, the synthesis of literature, the scientific arguments, and the conclusions presented herein originated solely from the author(s). The intellectual contribution remains entirely human.
Any alternative text (alt text) provided alongside figures in this article has been generated by Frontiers with the support of artificial intelligence and reasonable efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, including review by the authors wherever possible. If you identify any issues, please contact us.
Publisher's note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
References
1. World Health Organization. Over a Billion People Living with Mental Health Conditions—Services Require Urgent Scale-Up. Geneva: WHO (2025). Available online at: https://www.who.int/news/item/02-09-2025-over-a-billion-people-living-with-mental-health-conditions-services-require-urgent-scale-up (Accessed October 16, 2025).
2. Marx W, Moseley G, Berk M, Jacka F. Nutritional psychiatry: the present state of the evidence. Proc Nutr Soc. (2017) 76:427–36. doi: 10.1017/S0029665117002026
3. Jacka FN. Nutritional psychiatry: where to next? EBioMedicine. (2017) 17:24–9. doi: 10.1016/j.ebiom.2017.02.020
4. Owen L, Corfe B. The role of diet and nutrition on mental health and wellbeing. Proc Nutr Soc. (2017) 76:425–6. doi: 10.1017/S0029665117001057
5. Mason AE, Epel ES, Kristeller J, Moran PJ, Dallman M, Lustig RH, et al. Effects of a mindfulness-based intervention on mindful eating, sweets consumption, and fasting glucose levels in obese adults: data from the SHINE randomized controlled trial. J Behav Med. (2016) 39:201–13. doi: 10.1007/s10865-015-9692-8
6. Kristeller JL, Wolever RQ. Mindfulness-based eating awareness training for treating binge eating disorder: the conceptual foundation. Eat Disord. (2011) 19:49–61. doi: 10.1080/10640266.2011.533605
7. Tapper K. Mindful eating: what we know so far. Nutr Bull. (2022) 47:168–85. doi: 10.1111/nbu.12559
8. Garland EL, Geschwind N, Peeters F, Wichers M. Mindfulness training promotes upward spirals of positive affect and cognition: multilevel and autoregressive latent trajectory modeling analyses. Front Psychol. (2015) 6:15. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00015
9. Janssen LK, Duif I, Speckens AEM, van Loon I, Wegman J, de Vries JHM, et al. The effects of an 8-week mindful eating intervention on anticipatory reward responses in striatum and midbrain. Front Nutr. (2023) 10:1115727. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2023.1115727
10. Torske A, Schicker D, Freiherr J, et al. Mindfulness training decreases the habituation response to persistent food stimulation. Sci Rep. (2025) 15:14479. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-90172-3
11. Torske A, Bremer B, Hölzel BK, Maczka A, Koch K. Mindfulness meditation modulates stress-eating and its neural correlates. Sci Rep. (2024) 14:7294. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-57687-7
12. Warren JM, Smith N, Ashwell M. A structured literature review on the role of mindfulness, mindful eating and intuitive eating in changing eating behaviours: effectiveness and associated potential mechanisms. Nutr Res Rev. (2017) 30:272–83. doi: 10.1017/S0954422417000154
13. Mantzios M. (Re)defining mindful eating into mindful eating behaviour to advance scientific enquiry. Nutr Health. (2021) 27:367–71. doi: 10.1177/0260106020984091
14. Adan RAH, van der Beek EM, Buitelaar JK, Cryan JF, Hebebrand J, Higgs S, et al. Nutritional psychiatry: towards improving mental health by what you eat. Eur Neuropsychopharmacol. (2019) 29:1321–32. doi: 10.1016/j.euroneuro.2019.10.011
15. Logan AC, Jacka FN. Nutritional psychiatry research: an emerging discipline and its intersection with global urbanization, environmental challenges and the evolutionary mismatch. J Physiol Anthropol. (2014) 33:22. doi: 10.1186/1880-6805-33-22
16. Blundell JE, Finlayson G, Gibbons C, Caudwell P, Hopkins M. The biology of appetite control: do resting metabolic rate and fat-free mass drive energy intake? Physiol Behav. (2015) 152(Pt B):473–8. doi: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2015.05.031
17. Volkow ND, Wang GJ, Tomasi D, Baler RD. The dopamine motive system: implications for drug and food addiction. Nat Rev Neurosci. (2017) 18:741–52. doi: 10.1038/nrn.2017.130
18. Breit S, Kupferberg A, Rogler G, Hasler G. Vagus nerve as modulator of the brain-gut axis in psychiatric and inflammatory disorders. Front Psychiatry. (2018) 9:44. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00044
19. Gerritsen RJS, Band GPH. Breath of life: the respiratory vagal stimulation model of contemplative activity. Front Hum Neurosci. (2018) 12:397. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2018.00397
20. Volpini V, Bricca S, Ubaldi F, Ghaffar T, Platania S, Valeriani F, et al. Regulation of the gut microbiota through meditation and exercise: potential for enhancing physical well-being across all ages in the twenty-first century. Sports Med Health Sci. (2025). doi: 10.1016/j.smhs.2025.07.007. [Epub ahead of print].
21. Black DS, Slavich GM. Mindfulness meditation and the immune system: a systematic review of randomized controlled trials. Ann N Y Acad Sci. (2016) 1373:13–24. doi: 10.1111/nyas.12998
22. Cryan JF, Dinan TG. Mind-altering microorganisms: the impact of the gut microbiota on brain and behaviour. Nat Rev Neurosci. (2012) 13:701–12. doi: 10.1038/nrn3346
23. Calderone A, Latella D, Impellizzeri F, de Pasquale P, Famà F, Quartarone A, et al. Neurobiological changes induced by mindfulness and meditation: a systematic review. Biomedicines. (2024) 12:2613. doi: 10.3390/biomedicines12112613
24. Hölzel BK, Carmody J, Vangel M, Congleton C, Yerramsetti SM, Gard T, et al. Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density. Psychiatry Res Neuroimaging. (2011) 191:36–43. doi: 10.1016/j.pscychresns.2010.08.006
25. Lazar SW, Kerr CE, Wasserman RH, Gray JR, Greve DN, Treadway MT, et al. Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness. Neuroreport. (2005) 16:1893–7. doi: 10.1097/01.wnr.0000186598.66243.19
26. Fox KC, Dixon ML, Nijeboer S, Girn M, Floman JL, Lifshitz M, et al. Functional neuroanatomy of meditation: a review and meta-analysis of 78 functional neuroimaging investigations. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. (2016) 65:208–28. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2016.03.021
27. Brewer JA, Worhunsky PD, Gray JR, Tang YY, Weber J, Kober H. Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. (2011) 108:20254–9. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1112029108
28. Diez GG, Castellanos N. Investigación de mindfulness en neurociencia cognitiva. Rev Neurol. (2022) 74:163–9. doi: 10.33588/rn.7405.2021014
29. Tang YY, Hölzel BK, Posner MI. The neuroscience of mindfulness meditation. Nat Rev Neurosci. (2015) 16:213–25. doi: 10.1038/nrn3916
30. Farb NA, Segal ZV, Anderson AK. Mindfulness meditation training alters cortical representations of interoceptive attention. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. (2013) 8:15–26. doi: 10.1093/scan/nss066
31. Gomutbutra P, Yingchankul N, Chattipakorn N, Chattipakorn S, Srisurapanont M. The effect of mindfulness-based intervention on brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF): a systematic review and meta-analysis of controlled trials. Front Psychol. (2020) 11:2209. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02209
32. Creswell JD. Mindfulness interventions. Annu Rev Psychol. (2017) 68:491–516. doi: 10.1146/annurev-psych-042716-051139
33. Klamert L, Brockett C, Craike M, Shrestha N, Parker AG. The imperative of planetary mental health: insights, recommendations, and a call to action. Glob Public Health. (2025) 20:2541220. doi: 10.1080/17441692.2025.2541220
34. Lan Y, Chen L, Lin Z, Tang H, Zhang X. Association of planetary health diet index with depression and mortality in the United States. BMC Psychiatry. (2025) 25:556. doi: 10.1186/s12888-025-06987-x
35. Lu T, Chen W, Huang X, Zhai M, Fu C, Xu L. The NutriLight framework: a novel approach to evaluating sustainable and healthy diets. J Nutr Sci. (2025) 14:e48. doi: 10.1017/jns.2025.10015
36. Yücel S, Metin ZE. The interplay between mindful eating, climate change awareness, and psychological wellbeing: a crosssectional analysis. Food Sci Nutr. (2025) 13:e70716. doi: 10.1002/fsn3.70716
37. Antonovsky A. The salutogenic model as a theory to guide health promotion. Health Promot Int. (1996) 11:1118. doi: 10.1093/heapro/11.1.11
38. Antonovsky A. Unraveling the Mystery of Health: How People Manage Stress and Stay Well. San Francisco, CA: JosseyBass (1987).
39. Eriksson M. The sense of coherence in the salutogenic model of health. In:Mittelmark MB, Sagy S, Eriksson M, Bauer GF, Pelikan JM, Lindström B, et al., , editors. The Handbook of Salutogenesis. Cham: Springer (2016). p. 91–6. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-04600-6_11
40. Langeland E, Vinje HF. Applying salutogenesis in mental healthcare settings. In:Mittelmark MB, Sagy S, Eriksson M, Bauer G, Pelikan JM, Lindström B, et al., , editors. The Handbook of Salutogenesis. Cham: Springer (2022). p. 433–9. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-79515-3_39
41. McEwen BS. Neurobiological and systemic effects of chronic stress. Chronic Stress. (2017) 1:2470547017692328. doi: 10.1177/2470547017692328
42. de Lara Pérez B, Delgado-Ríos M, García-Castro FJ. Mindful eating program (MEPCOP) and its impact on children's food consumption. Curr Psychol. (2025) 44:16718–28. doi: 10.1007/s12144-025-08299-5
43. Mittelmark MB, Bauer GF. Salutogenesis as a theory, as an orientation and as the sense of coherence. In: Mittelmark MB, Sagy S, Eriksson M, Bauer G, Pelikan JM, Lindström B, et al., , editors. The Handbook of Salutogenesis. Cham: Springer (2022). p. 11–7. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-79515-3_3
44. Puga-Olguín A, Hernández-Hernández MF, Fernández-Demeneghi R, López-Miranda CI, Flores-Aguilar LÁ. Systemic chronic inflammation: integrative strategies for health improvement and prevention of inflammatory receptor overexpression. Receptors. (2025) 4:5. doi: 10.3390/receptors4010005
45. Kalika E, Hussain M, Egan H, Mantzios M. Exploring the moderating role of mindfulness, mindful eating, and self-compassion on the relationship between eating-disordered quality of life and orthorexia nervosa. Eat Weight Disord. (2023) 28:18. doi: 10.1007/s40519-023-01542-7
46. Hussain M, Keyte R, Kalika E, Mantzios M. Exploring the interplay between mindful eating and self-compassion: insights from three empirical studies and future directions for research. Front Psychol. (2025) 16:1545056. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1545056
47. Norwitz NG, Sethi S, Palmer CM. Ketogenic diet as a metabolic treatment for mental illness. Curr Opin Endocrinol Diabetes Obes. (2020) 27:269–74. doi: 10.1097/MED.0000000000000564
48. Beal T, Gardner CD, Herrero M, Iannotti LL, Merbold L, Nordhagen S, et al. Friend or foe? The role of animal-source foods in healthy and environmentally sustainable diets. J Nutr. (2023) 153:409–25. doi: 10.1016/j.tjnut.2022.10.016
49. Daubenmier J, Kristeller J, Hecht FM, Maninger N, Kuwata M, Jhaveri K, et al. Mindfulness intervention for stress eating to reduce cortisol and abdominal fat among overweight and obese women: an exploratory randomized controlled study. J Obes. (2011) 2011:651936. doi: 10.1155/2011/651936
50. Fernández-Demeneghi R, Domínguez-Pantoja M, Martínez-Moreno AG, Vargas-Moreno I, Ramirez-Rodriguez R. Positioning berries in nutritional psychiatry: potential for prevention and co-therapy in mental health. Front Behav Neurosci. (2025) 19:1622242. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2025.1622242
Keywords: eating behavior, gut-brain axis, mental health, mindful eating, mindfulness, nutritional psychiatry, salutogenesis
Citation: Fernández-Demeneghi R, Sánchez-Bizama J, Martínez-Moreno AG, Vargas-Moreno I, Ramirez-Rodriguez R, Puga-Olguín A and Fernández-Barradas EY (2026) Mindful eating as the next therapeutic frontier in nutritional psychiatry. Front. Nutr. 13:1726847. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2026.1726847
Received: 16 October 2025; Revised: 24 December 2025;
Accepted: 08 January 2026; Published: 28 January 2026.
Edited by:
Costela Lacrimioara Serban, Victor Babes University of Medicine and Pharmacy, RomaniaReviewed by:
Astrid Lounici, University Psychiatric Clinic Basel, SwitzerlandCopyright © 2026 Fernández-Demeneghi, Sánchez-Bizama, Martínez-Moreno, Vargas-Moreno, Ramirez-Rodriguez, Puga-Olguín and Fernández-Barradas. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Rafael Fernández-Demeneghi, cmFmYWVsX2RlbWVuZWdoaUBob3RtYWlsLmNvbQ==
†These authors have contributed equally to this work and share first authorship