Nutritional psychiatry is one area of medicine that has been inspired by the importance of diet and its effects on mental health. Essentially, the foods a person consumes affect all aspects of their health, including mental health. For example, it has been shown in several recent research analyzes that examine and analyze multiple studies that what one eats is associated with the risk of depression.
According to a Live Science report, dietary patterns characterized by a high intake of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fish, olive oil, low-fat dairy, antioxidants, and low intake of animal foods were associated with a lower risk of depression.
Conversely, a dietary pattern characterized by high consumption of red and/or processed meat, refined grains, sweets, high-fat dairy products, butter, potatoes, and high-fat broths, and low intake of fruits and vegetables, is associated with an increased risk of depression.
Thus, the findings of a recent study contradict a common assumption by asserting that vegetarians have more episodes of depression than meat eaters.
Important points
• The Journal of Affective Disorders published a study this month that found that vegetarians were twice as likely to suffer from depressive episodes compared to meat eaters.
• The study examined 14,216 adults in Brazil between the ages of 35 and 74. Food frequency questionnaires were used to determine whether people were following a meatless diet, and diagnostic tools were used to determine whether any of the participants had depression.
Depression
• After analyzing the data, the researchers concluded that meat-free diets were leading to weaker episodes of depression compared to meat eaters.
• The relationship between diet and depression was independent of socioeconomic and lifestyle factors such as smoking, levels of physical activity and body mass index (BMI).
• The study was not entirely convincing, and researchers around the world stated that the study was designed to analyze data rather than conduct a controlled trial, making it impossible to conclude whether a meat-free diet causes depression.
• Specifically, the researchers discovered that poor diet quality was associated to some extent with higher rates of depression. But the link is not fully explained or explained.
Depression or vegetarianism, which comes first?
In light of the above, questions arose about what could explain the link between vegetarian diets and depression? Is there a non-food mechanism that might be behind this relationship? Experts suggested that depression may be linked to an increased likelihood of becoming a vegetarian, and not the other way around, according to the following:
Reason #1: It is common for depression to cause feelings of guilt as well as a tendency to think negative thoughts. Animals are treated with what some may see as cruelty during the meat production processes. The inconvenient truth of slaughterhouses and ranches is likely to reflect on people who are depressed with a sense of guilt about their part in eating these products.
Reason 2: Giving up meat can also lead to depression through means other than nutritional deficiency. Even if there’s no shortage of “happy nutrients” in a vegan diet, eating meat can cause depression in other ways. For example, a vegetarian diet may affect one’s relationships with others and participation in social activities and may sometimes be associated with arousal or other forms of social exclusion
Possible explanations
There are many possible explanations for the relationship between vegetarianism and depression. However, the results of this study suggest that plant-based nutrition does not contribute to depression, but rather that a vegetarian social experience can contribute to depression, and depression is likely to increase the likelihood of a person becoming vegan, or perhaps vegetarianism and depression are affected by a third variable, such as exposure to shots for industry. Meat is seen by some as violent.
It is therefore possible that vegetarians and depression may not be the cause of the other, but that there is a third factor that causes both. A possible cause could be a number of characteristics or experiences associated with vegetarianism and depression