It's all about watching your diet, maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and ensuring you get the necessary nutrients.
The problem isn't the foods, at least not entirely. You can eat all the processed foods you want, just make sure you get the nutrients needed from somewhere.
Eat a bunch of walnuts and other various nuts and legumes. Walnuts contain Omega 3s, not sure specifically which polyunsaturated fatty acid is in walnuts, in comparison to fish, but some Omega 3 is in walnuts.
Essential Fatty Acids are just that, essential. They are extremely important in keeping a healthy central nervous system, and health across the body (lipids are necessary for cellular construction - gotta eat certain lipids so that the body can manufacture the rest of the lipids it needs, such as cholesterol - body makes it, don't really need to eat much of it, if any, though excess doesn't hurt if you maintain a healthy living). And a healthy CNS means healthy brain activity, as that should help regulate neurotransmitter levels, of which is responsible for differences in behavior.
I don't eat the best diet, I dislike the flavor of most healthy stuff. I eat for enjoyment, not for nutrition. I try hard to find enjoyable foods that contain the nutrients I really should be getting. I have enough of an active lifestyle to permit eating foods that can be unhealthy in large amounts, I just make sure most of the "unhealthy" stuff I eat has at least something good in it. The excess fats and calories I can moderate, it's the stuff that is not there that is more of a problem.
Other ways I moderate my nutrient intake is supplements. When I remember I take fish oil pills, and some other pills that can't hurt but who knows how really helpful they are (5-HTP as an example, related to tryptophan).
But in closing, the problem isn't so much the foods, it's the education. Most people think whatever foods they are eating is giving them enough to live. And the fatties? They are proof that unhealthy lifestyle and whatever food you want can keep you alive.
Most of the nutritional education the lowest levels of society gets, is strictly about "eat so and so servings of such and such" and "if you don't get these vitamins, bad stuff will happen". People recognize some of the glaring problems that malnutrition in the form of missing nutrients can cause, but that effects the concept of being able to live.
Things such as the various fatty acids, well... people will get enough to keep their body alive, no matter how little they know or care about them. However, with fatty acids and brain health, being alive and being healthy are two different things, and generally very unrecognizable medically speaking. Sure, might get diagnosed and prescribed meds for depression, but that is only treating the symptom and not the cause.
Most of our mental conditions can easily be determined to be a product of malnutrition over the period of a lifetime. Also is why most problems don't really appear until adulthood. Adult onset ADD I will bet is entirely a [real] mental disorder caused by malnutrition. And it is also often paired with mild depression.
Easily modulated not only in nutrition but also through lifestyle. Forcing oneself to exercise and have a routine regimen often brings about a positive elevation in important neurotransmitters.
Our body wasn't designed for the life we force it to endure. Offices, routine mandated by modern constructs of time (other than natural light/dark cycles, even then, our body wasn't designed to sleep 8 hours and be completely awake both physically and mentally for 16 either, but mentally dozing is something a lot of us do to alleviate that stress)... all terrible for the mind and body. It takes a lot of work to maintain our body to be comfortable and happy. Problem being, our society is also one of everything should be handed to us, and we having to endure even more work, outside of work, is just madness. Telling people that that extra work can bring increased comfort and happiness is often brushed aside and bullshit.
Eating whole foods and getting all the essential and less essential nutrients in the quantities in which they should be consumed, is not the answer in of itself. It's a start, but also not required. At least, the whole foods aspect. A healthy and active lifestyle is the part absolutely required to really regulate the body in the way it was designed to be regulated. You cannot fight nature. Exercise is a trick - it might suck, but it's fooling our body into thinking it's in the environment it was designed to live within. Force yourself to get some mental enjoyment from the physical activity, and the bonuses will just cascade.
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