Vegetarians are more likely to suffer from depression, study claims

Vegetarians may be more prone to depressionresearch suggests.

One study found that people who stop eating meat have twice as many depressive episodes as those who stick to animal products.

Brazilian experts say it could be due to the ‘social experience’ vegetables endure, such as being teased for their choice of diet.

But giving up meat isn’t necessarily to blame, they admitted. Instead, it may be the case that depressed people turn to a vegetarian diet.

Or, it could be that the link can be explained by a separate factor linking the two.

This can include “exposure to violent images of the meat industry”, according to Dr Chris Bryant, a psychologist at the University of Bath.

writing for The conversationHe added: ‘Preventing cruelty to animals is the most cited reason for vegetarians to avoid meat.

“Documentaries like Dominion and Earthlings that depict cruelty can’t easily be described as feel-good movies.

“One can easily imagine that a person who consumes this type of media would become a vegetarian and, especially when most people choose to look the other way, become depressed.”

A vegetarian diet does not necessarily require people to eat more vegetables. It simply means they avoid meat, and it can be equally unhealthy for omnivorous diets if they are high in trans fats and starchy carbohydrates.

The study was published in the Journal of affective disorders.

The researchers tracked the eating habits of 14,216 adults in Brazil aged 35 to 74 using food questionnaires.

Brazil is famous for its meat-rich diet, and despite recent increases in vegetarianism in the country, only 82 of those surveyed did not eat meat.

They compared this to the number of depressive episodes — periods of being in a bad mood or losing interest in most activities.

This was measured by interviews with trained psychiatrists, who asked them to recall how they felt.

After taking into account 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 than carnivores.

Even when nutritional differences between the diets, including calories, fat, carbohydrates and protein, were taken into account, the difference between meat eaters and non-meat eaters remained.

Writing in the journal, researchers from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul said: “Depressive episodes are more frequent in people who do not eat meat, regardless of socioeconomic and lifestyle factors.”

Nutrient deficiencies do not explain this association. The nature of the association remains unclear and longitudinal data are needed to clarify the causal relationship.’

And experts criticized the study, arguing that it couldn’t establish whether vegetarianism actually caused depression because it wasn’t a controlled experiment.

Mary Mosquera-Cochran, a registered dietitian at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center who was not involved in the study, said the findings can only be applied to Brazilian populations.

She said: ‘The researchers found that diet quality was somewhat associated with higher rates of depression, but did not fully explain the association.

“The authors note that it is currently estimated that between 5 and 14 percent of Brazilians follow a vegetarian-style diet, so this sample may not reflect all vegetarians in Brazil either.”