

Vegetarian Diets and Mental Health - oyvindeh
http://evolutionarypsychiatry.blogspot.com/2014/02/here-we-go-again-vegetarian-diets-and.html

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holri
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...](http://www.welt.de/gesundheit/article125270740/Vegetarier-leiden-
haeufiger-an-Krebs-und-Asthma.html)

~~~
jordan0day
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).

------
zacinbusiness
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
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.

~~~
zacinbusiness
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](http://bit.ly/1nQx8EQ)

~~~
PerfectElement
I usually answer with this:
[http://veganbodybuilding.com](http://veganbodybuilding.com)

------
IdAgreeWithThat
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.

~~~
err4nt
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
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?

~~~
err4nt
At first I wasn't doing the plant-based diet right, I was just eating
meatless. Then I began replacing meat with the prepared meat analogues you'd
find at the grocery store as I was trying to round out my nutrition.

Once I knew this was going to be a more long-term thing I began exploring
vegetarian cuisine a lot more. Once I was out of college and working from home
and was able to cook from home so it wasn't until I was a vegetarian for about
five years before I started being more intentional and well-rounded in my
diet.

I'd recommend anybody trying out diets to get plugged into a community where
there are fresh and relevant recipe and lifestyle ideas being discussed. I was
'in isolation' just doing my thing for the first half decade, then I
discovered /r/vegetarian and /r/vegan and my life has been a lot richer
because of all the great ideas I can use to spice up my life. I wish I had
(bothered?) gotten plugged into that sooner!

------
incision
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
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](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/541482.The_New_Becoming_Vegetarian)

[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48307.Becoming_Vegan](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48307.Becoming_Vegan)

Don't be a pudding veggie, be _informed_ and _healthy_!

------
oky
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)

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33a
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.

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1457389
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
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.

------
jaysonelliot
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.

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bradshaw1965
Maybe people who are overly concerned about their food consumption, of which
vegetarianism is a subset, are more likely to be neurotic.

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manojlds
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
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.

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rdmcfee
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 :)

------
bane
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](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7763330)

------
scarmig
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).

------
yamalight
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
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."

~~~
yamalight
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).

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arrrg
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.)

------
johnohara
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.

~~~
PerfectElement
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.

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chez17
>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.

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dhaneshnm
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.

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

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hellbreakslose
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.

