Eating more greens can make you blues

Numerous studies show that vegetarians may be more prone to depression. People who abstain from meat have twice as many depressive episodes as those who eat animal products.

Brazilian experts say this may be due to the “social experience” people have, such as being teased for their diet choices. And this, according to them, may not be related to the rejection of meat.

According to Dr. Chris Bryant, a psychologist at the University of Bath, prevention of animal cruelty is the most commonly cited reason vegetarians give for avoiding meat: “Documentaries like Dominion and Earthlings, which depict cruelty, are not good films. One can easily imagine that a person who is interested in this kind of topics will become both a vegetarian and possibly depressed.”

A vegetarian diet does not necessarily require people to eat more vegetables. It simply means that they simply avoid meat. The study was published in the journal Mood Disorders.

The researchers tracked the eating habits of 14,216 people in Brazil, aged 35 to 74, using nutritional questionnaires. Brazil is famous for its meat-rich diet, and despite the country’s recent rise in vegetarianism, only 82 people surveyed did not eat meat.

They compared this to the number of depressive episodes — periods of low mood or loss of interest in most activities. The measurement was done through interviews with qualified psychiatrists who asked them to recall how people felt. After controlling for lifestyle factors such as smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity and body mass index (BMI), the results showed that vegetarians had 2.37 times more episodes of meat eating. Even when accounting for nutritional differences between diets, including calories, fat, carbohydrates, and protein, the difference between “meat eaters” and non-meat eaters persisted. Researchers from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul wrote in the journal: “Depressive episodes are more common in people who do not eat meat, regardless of socioeconomic factors and lifestyle. Nutritional deficiencies do not explain this link. The nature of the association remains unclear, and more research is needed to elucidate a causal relationship.”

At the same time, experts criticized the study, arguing that it cannot determine whether vegetarianism actually causes depression because it was not a controlled experiment. Mary Mosquera-Cochran, a registered dietitian at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, who was not involved in the study, said the results may only be applicable to the Brazilian population: “Researchers found that dietary quality was associated to some extent with higher rates of depression. but that didn’t fully explain the connection. The authors note that an estimated 5 to 14 percent of Brazilians currently eat a vegetarian diet, so this sample may also not represent all vegetarians in Brazil.”

Christina Dinisyuk.

Photo: Shutterstock / ViDi Studio