Sad veggies

From a Tweet linking to the original article:

New study in Nature (N = 180,000) links a “vegetarian-type diet” with “anxiety symptoms, depressive symptoms, mental distress, psychotic experience, self-harm and trauma and a relatively lower well-being score.”

This comes with the obvious caveat that correlation isn’t causation, but this certainly matches my experience, both from when I followed a nearly vegan diet and from the most vocally vegetarian people in my wider circle of acquaintances. It’s entirely possible that the same people who are chronically online reading about “mental health” are the same people who join fad diets.

But I wouldn’t be surprised if the modern vegetarian diet of highly processed foods, few healthy fats, and social isolation coming from eating a non-standard diet contribute or partially cause these psychological problems.

Our modern marketing society pushes extremes such as vegan diets that require all sorts of protein powders, supplements, and processed foods.

Unfortunately there’s little push for traditional, lower meat diets. I guess there’s a lot less money to be made in selling buckwheat. I’d rather eat high quality meat once or twice a week than be a vegan or stuff myself with cheap, processed meat three times a day.