Vegetarian Diets and Mental Health

http://evolutionarypsychiatry.blogspot.com/2014/02/here-we-go-again-vegetarian-diets-and.html

by oyvindeh • 12 years ago

46 40 12 years ago

evolutionarypsychiatry.blogspot.com

yamalight2• 12 years ago

As someone who never ate any meat or fish during the life and feels perfectly fine, stuff like this always makes me giggle. And I just love to see how people take only one specific point out of article and exploit it ignoring everything else. Including very important statement: "no statements can be made whether the poorer health in vegetarians in our study is caused by their dietary habit or if they consume this form of diet due to their poorer health status". So, yeah..

oyvindeh• 12 years ago

The blog post does conclude with exactly what you say: "What can we learn from this study? Are vegetarians are more likely to be neurotic sick people looking for dietary cures for what ails them, thus come out of the study looking more skinny, unhappy, and unsatisfied? Or are vegetarian diets nutritionally bereft leading to health problems, mental health problems in particular? We will never be able to get that answer from a study of this design."

yamalight2• 12 years ago

Yeah, author does mentions that the study doesn't answers those questions. Still, I find the fact of writing a whole post based on one point, from the paper that seems to be pretty bad at specifically this point, to be disturbing (and sadly quite representative of modern journalism/blogging scene).

vijayr• 12 years ago

I'm a vegetarian - while I wish everyone else was, it is just not possible. People love their meat too much.

Ethics aside, eating meat (at the current rate) is just not sustainable economically (unless the world's population suddenly shrinks, or the amount of resources available suddenly increases or both - significantly).

Those who care about the environment, sustainability etc should read this book http://www.amazon.com/Meatonomics-Economics-Consume-Much--Sm...

Some crazy/scary numbers from the book:

More than half the land used to grow crops in the U.S, are used to raise crops for (meat) animals.

Animal food industry is a big contributor to global warming

We've already eaten away many of the fish, and are seriously messing with the well being of our oceans

Some of the drugs used in the animal food industry, are banned in other countries (Canada, Europe etc)

And so on.

All this to say that we should carefully look at our food choices. If people want to eat meat, that's fine - we just need to make sure it is sustainable, and not cause irreversible damage to the planet. Ethics, animal suffering, cheeseburger laws...etc? That is a whole another discussion.

oky• 12 years ago

this study is a cross sectional study of 15k people, but they only actually used something like 1.3k of those individuals in order to match up to the ~330 vegetarians to a person from a different group. (that is 13k discarded survey results...)

this type of cross sample matching (where the majority of the individuals polled are tossed away) is suspect, as is the time it took to conduct the survey and release the results (2007 is when the survey concluded, the study wasn't released until 2014).

imo, the writer of the blog post should extend a critical eye to academic studies (and see where they could be improved), instead of re-posting them as troll bait (and leaving out important scientific notions, like: we can't extrapolate from this study)

IdAgreeWithThat• 12 years ago

As a vegetarian for over 10 years, I can say that this isn't surprising to me. There are all sorts of people who hop around different health trends to fix issues that they have in their lives, and many of them end up participating in a vegetarian diet at some point. You also have a group of people who falsely claim to be vegetarian (just to have something else to say about themselves, or due to a poor understanding of the diet). Then you have the clique vegetarians who needed an identity and social circle to settle into. Lastly, you have a lot of people who try out a vegetarian diet with a strong predisposition that they will suffer negative health consequences from the transition. These ones leave the diet a few days or so later because something is going terribly wrong with them. In short, there tend to be more factors to consider for those involved in a vegetarian diet. With people who eat meat (who I have nothing against), it tends to just be that that's what you've always done, what your parents before you did, and so on.

bunderbunder• 12 years ago

Ditto here.

You can color me unsurprised if mental health issues correlate with any lifestyle choice that differs from the norms of the culture one was raised in, really. I'm not sure if that's indicative of anything other than standard platitudes about finding one's place and/or being an outsider.

err4nt2• 12 years ago

I've been a vegetarian for seven years and when I started I was squarely in the "a lot of people who try out a vegetarian diet with a strong predisposition that they will suffer negative health consequences" group.

You know how sometimes you get that sinking feeling like you know something you don't want to admit? Well I kept getting that sinking feeling like I couldn't be fully creative, or fully useful to others while still eating meat. It was the weirdest intuition to have, but after trying to ignore the feeling or suppress it for four weeks, I finally decided to try cutting meat from my plate. It wasn't motivated by animal rights or any external causes or anything like that, but I assumed that if I was meat-free any longer than one month I'd be in the hospital on an IV, emaciated and worn thin; malnourished.

I committed to being meatless for one month, after which I would re-evaluate and almost certainly renege. I was hoping the physical toll it would have on me would quell the stirrings of my subconscious like some sort of sick penance, so should the thought of eating meat ever reoccur I could be satisfied that at least I had tried…

Only two weeks into my plant-based diet I felt that same feeling as when you first put on your glasses and everything around you becomes less hazy. It was like a fog had lifted, and to my surprise I began to require about two hours less sleep each night. I was in college and it was a busy season so I could really make good use of those two new hours in my day. At the end of that first month I had to ask myself: "You've been feeling better than ever, would you sacrifice TWO waking hours in your day just to eat meat?" So I committed to stay meatless until the end of the semester. Once summer began, I would go back to meat if I wanted to.

Well I'm in my eighth year of learning to live with a plant-based diet and I'm still enjoying the vibrancy and diversity I can find within it. The surprising things for me are how it has led me to grow as a person in ways I'm very sure I couldn't have grown while I was still eating meat! For some reason eating meat wasn't just blocking time from my day planner, it was blocking understanding in other ways too. I became a lot more patient with others, and a generous person. After two years my feelings changed and I felt healed in a lot of ways. I have also learned a lot about self-control (as with any form of asceticism I imagine) because whenever I doubt my willpower over an issue I have a ready example of daily discipline from which I can draw determination. Everybody should have something like that in their life, and for me it's my diet. I have also grown to appreciate animals and what they provide to us (which includes food and clothing, companions, workers, and even family members to some) in a way I was barred from appreciating while I was so caught up in focusing on enjoying animals after they were alive.

I really recommend that everybody abstain from eating animals for a period of time to help them appreciate them greater. It's perfectly possible to survive (and thrive) without ever requiring the death of an animal to sustain you, so each time you choose to do that it comes at some cost to you (the price of the food) and a much higher cost to that animal (death). Be grateful, and be very grateful you were born into a species that's not farmed the same way because that's rare on this planet ;) My only dietary advice is eat for both long-term health and short-term enjoyment!

tormeh• 12 years ago

Are you sure the physical effects don't just come from eating more fruit and vegetables? What did you eat before you went vegetarian? Lots of grains?

holri2• 12 years ago

From an interview with the author of this study:

""" ... Nathalie Burkert: No, no, that's not true. Based on our results, we conclude not that much meat is healthy. There was a press release with which we disagree. Since the results of the study are simply misrepresented. """

http://www.welt.de/gesundheit/article125270740/Vegetarier-le...

shiven• 12 years ago

Now that is as straight from the horse's mouth as it gets!

Another science casualty on the altar of misinformed press.

jordan0day• 12 years ago

But then you leave out this following quote: "Burkert: What you see in our results, is that a diet is associated with moderate consumption of meat and high in fruits and vegetables with good health. These are the results in terms of the statistics on subjective health, quality of life and physician visits. The frequency of various diseases speaks for the mixed diet nutrition."

(I had to use Google Translate on this, so I can't be completely confident the English version matches to original German).

33a• 12 years ago

The Austrian study that the author of this post cites has serious methodological flaws. In particular, in Austria it is common practice to prescribe vegetarian diets as treatment for various illnesses, and the authors of the paper failed to account for this fact.

zacinbusiness3• 12 years ago

There is a pretty strong anti-vegetarianism sentiment where I'm from (the Southeast U.S.). I see it (as a vegetarian for almost 5 years now) when I visit the grocery store and, annoyingly, from my family.

At the grocery store I am often asked "What, are you some kind of vegetarian or something?" when I buy tofu, tempeh, lots of vegetables, and no meat products. And when I say yes, people are often flabbergasted. "I could never do that, I love bacon too much!" That's fine, I'm not asking anyone else to change their diet, and I've never been a "judgy" vegetarian - I honestly don't care what other people eat, it doesn't bother me. But it's annoying when people get all up in my business.

My family is worse, though. Every time I ever have a health issue, they attribute it to being a vegetarian. Get a cold? I need more beef. Sinus infection? I need more chicken. And now my wife's family are blaming me for a health issue that she's having. It's madness.

finleye• 12 years ago

I'm also from the Southeast, and had the same issues. Ridicule from family and sometimes even strangers. I've been vegan now for 5 years. I've never had so many people concerned about my protein intake.

Moving to NYC changed all that though. It's not unusual here, and the food is a lot better.

zacinbusiness3• 12 years ago

Yeah the whole "but where do you get your protein" thing gets old after about 30 seconds. I have answered many emails and Facebook posts with this: http://bit.ly/1nQx8EQ

VLM• 12 years ago

"It's madness."

Its just conformity. Try to change the topic to religion, anything other than vanilla Evangelical Protestant Christian, and see how much they like it. Or, "I don't like large pickup trucks/SUVs".

(edited to add, tell them their prices are too high, if you want to tweak them back. I'm not a vegan but our family has a relationship with an organic farmer who provides us with almost all the meat we eat (other than fish), so in the very rare event I get questioned at the market my trollish side often comes out and its sometimes pretty funny)

zacinbusiness3• 12 years ago

Religion is another hot topic. My wife may need (minor) brain surgery (minor as far as brain surgery goes) and her family believes they can pray it away instead. It's a whole thing here.

bradshaw1965• 12 years ago

Maybe people who are overly concerned about their food consumption, of which vegetarianism is a subset, are more likely to be neurotic.

chez17• 12 years ago

particularly when it comes to anxiety, eating disorders, and depression

I would be interesting in the eating disorder part being proven as a cause and not a correlation. Knowing someone with an eating disorder and being introduced into that world, lots of people use being vegetarian or vegan as an excuse not to eat. It's very common. I'm skeptical that it's a cause in this case.

arrrg• 12 years ago

Don’t most people eat vegetarian for ethical reasons? For those these health considerations do not play a role at all when it comes to deciding whether to eat vegetarian or not. (They obviously do play a role when it comes to considering what to eat.)

incision• 12 years ago

My anecdotal experience as a lifelong (since birth) lacto-ovo vegetarian leads me to think there's something to this.

I can't speak to the conclusions exactly, but the reasoning - dietary deficiencies - rings true to me. I've experienced dramatic results from supplementing with creatine, choline, zinc and omega 3s. The fact that this article cites so many of things I've come to independent conclusions about seems worthy of consideration.

One thing I'd be really curious about with regard to any correlation between vegan/vegetarianism and mental health issues is simply which came first. Again anecdotally, I've met a lot of vegatarian converts - many for whom I'd wager food is just one manifestation of an existing neurosis.

hoggle• 12 years ago

I've been vegetarian / vegan for almost 10 years myself and get my vitamin b12 levels checked regularly. A lot of meat eaters actually have low vitamin b12 levels too because of lower intrinsic factor (gut ability to absorb b12) caused by age or distinct genetic setup. Omega 3 is also something I keep in check with 2-3 table spoons of ground flax-seeds a day. Flax oil is a good source of omega 3 as well but much more difficult to handle because it needs to be fresh, cooled and consumed relatively quickly.

Be aware that a vitamin b12 deficiency often happens without symptoms, also meeting the lower threshold of acceptable levels doesn't mean you have got enough of it.

I would advise everyone but especially those on a vegan diet to get their vitamin b12 levels checked regularly. Take your supplements! Don't ruin your brains!

Check out this very informative video by Michael Greger - vegetarian / vegan himself, he has debunked a lot of myths around proper veg diet some 12 years ago (yes the video is pretty long - so what it's your health that is at stake here):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7KeRwdIH04

Also good books on the topic:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/541482.The_New_Becoming_V...

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48307.Becoming_Vegan

Don't be a pudding veggie, be informed and healthy!

manojlds• 12 years ago

I am Indian, and have been vegetarian since birth. Born into a family of vegetarians, and our ancestors have been vegetarians for centuries. We are fine, thank you.

I think this article is about those in the West who try out being vegetarian. I wish that can be made explicit in the article and the comments here.

tgb• 12 years ago

It's actually about Austrians - or at least that's where the data came from. I believe it's pretty explicit in the article, though I did have to check the linked journal article to make sure.

sremani• 12 years ago

I am the same. Just want to add, if you want to be a vegetarian-convert try it by consuming traditional foods from vegetarian cultures it has done the trick for some of my friends. Vegetarian foods from traditional vegetarian cultures tend to be closest to wholesome vegetarian diet rather than the salad option available to most westerners or any other hap-hazard cookbook.

adarshr• 12 years ago

I'm a born-vegetarian as well and would like to add that contrary to what some westerners believe, vegetarian diet isn't just about salads and vegetables. If my mental ability was affected, I wouldn't be here reading comments on Hacker News.

rdmcfee• 12 years ago

Just wanting to reiterate that this is an observational cohort study that shows only a weak correlation. There's no casual information at all in the study referenced in this post and the correlation is so weak that it's unlikely to even provide useful hypotheses for future interventional studies.

Everyone I know who's a vegetarian was a bit wacky to start with :)

scarmig• 12 years ago

Vegetarian for ethical/environmental reasons. I buy that this could be the case and would be surprised if there weren't some bad effects to go along with the good. The source, however, leaves a lot to be desired.

I look forward to meat growing on trees, so we can study meat without a bunch of ideology creeping in (from either the vegetarianism-is-ethically-good-therefore-it-must-be-healthier crowd or the I-hate-vegetarians-and-love-meat-therefore-meat-must-be-required crowd).

1457389• 12 years ago

I remember this study doing the rounds a few weeks ago. The consensus back then was that there were significant confounding factors. For one thing, you can't be sure that the vegetarians you include in the set didn't become vegetarian specifically to address some lifestyle problem or health issue. Based on my anecdotal experience of vegetarians in wealthy first world nations, a large proportion include health concerns as part of their justification for vegetarianism.

Might have been useful to only include vegetarians who had been on their diet for a minimum length of time, or exclude those who said they had health issues.

Another issue someone already noted below, but the cherrypicking involved in going from thousands of survey responses to the few hundred they actually used must have been enormous.

mazuhl• 12 years ago

Another aspect might be that people with mental/eating disorders might be more attracted to vegetarianism, rather than vegetarianism causing those. I can see good reasons for this: vegetarianism is a good mask for being a "picky" eater, it's got strong issues you can be concerned/depressed about (animal suffering, environmental destruction, being a social outcast in certain areas), etc.

hellbreakslose• 12 years ago

Vegetarian is a way of life. Whether its healthy or not I can't judge and I'll leave that to the scientists that are doing research on that specific matter.

Although speaking from my own experience... I ain't a vegan I eat meat, and a lot of it cause I gym. I keep a healthy and balanced diet for a long time now. I am healthy and that's what doctors have been telling me on my annual check up. In the other hand I got a cousin that we are close with and he is a vegan. Although he is a vegan he drinks alcohol, not excessively but occasionally. He is unhealthy and unstable at the moment...

Life is not only about food but there are a lot of factors in there that needs to be considered.

Also regarding mental health... WALKING I found is the best solution.

bane• 12 years ago

Western omnivorous diets have far more meat than what's needed to fulfill required long-term nutritional needs. The consequences are pretty obvious. However, we are omnivores, and we really do need some meat in our diet.

Lots of people switch to vegetarian/vegan diets report short term (less than 5 years) health benefits. And I have no doubt these are true. Anecdotally, my couple goes at low meat/no meat diets were the same.

But most long term studies of people on primarily plant based diets show long term detriments that are double doctorate in nutrition and food science hard to eliminate.

It's a very hard pill to swallow for people who've spent considerable mental effort at designing a lifestyle around these kinds of diets, and have deeply held philosophical beliefs driving this choice.

Unfortunately, biology is an important driver here, and humans need some meat over the long term. Just not anywhere near what's common in the diets of citizens of most wealthy countries.

The good news is that we have an amazingly adaptable digestive system, capable of sustaining us on all sorts of crazy things. There's very few animals on the planet capable of sustenance from such an incredible diversity of food sources. It's no doubt one of the reasons humans have been able to spread so far and wide.

Within a remarkably short period of time, we've also been able to specialize. Humans in some corners of the world exist almost purely off of animal products while others live off of almost purely plant products, some of these populations have adapted so well they can consume dangerous levels of some nutrients or adapt to relatively low amounts of others.

A bit more on the biological specialization of humans and our evolved digestive systems.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7763330

jaysonelliot• 12 years ago

I was a vegetarian for twenty years, and I've also dealt with depression for all of my life. The most obvious question I'd have when looking at a correlation like that is, which came first?

In my case, I was spotted by guidance counselors as early as grade school for depression. It also correlated with my high test scores, creativity, and inability to focus on "boring" work.

When I became a vegetarian at age 15, it was as much a reaction to my surroundings (an Iowa farm town) and worldview as anything else. As a creative, bright, curious, kid, possibly dealing with low levels of depression, it's not too surprising that by 1986 I was a massive fan of The Smiths. The album Meat is Murder, combined with my social alienation, and not a few cows looking at me with their big ol' eyes every day, turned me into a vegetarian.

I don't think my depression increased when I gave up meat, at least not any more than it does for anyone going through their late teens and early twenties. By my thirties, life had improved, and so had my psyche. I was still vegetarian.

At age 35, I took stock of my vegetarianism, and decided I was no longer doing it for the reasons I had begun, and it had become something I only did because others expected me to. So I started eating meat. Now that I've been an omnivore for a few years, my mind works the same way it always has. With every year that I mature, things get better, but it's a trajectory I was on long before I changed my dietary habits.

I know the OP said that they were only pointing out correlation, not causation, but it seems clear to me that it's worth considering whether people who struggle with depression are turning to vegetarianism, rather than the other way around. There are so many variables and factors involved, it seems silly to make any statements about vegetarians and mental health at all, positive or negative.

holri2• 12 years ago

it is pretty clear that people who think about ethical issues, must be unhappy in and with this world.

johnohara• 12 years ago

While I can't speak to the issue of mental health effects, I can say with certainty that being purely vegan requires a very high level of knowledge and understanding about the human body's intrinsic dietary needs and metabolic processes.

Most vegans I know have acquired this knowledge over time. A vegan diet demands physiological due diligence and truthful self-discovery. Neither of which is a bad thing.

PerfectElement2• 12 years ago

I think that's true for anyone aiming at being healthy. I'd say that eating meat and not having any nutrition knowledge is even worse. If you don't know anything about nutrition, sticking with fruits, legumes, grains, nuts, seeds and greens is a pretty safe choice.

dhaneshnm• 12 years ago

I wonder how practising Hindus and Buddhists will scale in this kind of a study. I am a practicing Hindu. My family/clan and say some 20-30% of whole population of my country are lacto-vegetarians(no eggs and meat, but will consume milk) for generations. I hope the researcher does a study among that ethnic group too. That will fix this debate for good.

Vegetarian Diets and Mental Health

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