Meat and mental health: Meat eaters suffer less depression, anxiety

I'd say the first big thing to highlight is that correlation is not causation - you wouldn't want someone to take this study as proof that eating meat makes you less depressed. I would imagine that vegans (in particular vegans who chose their diet on ethical grounds) are overall more concerned about the state of the world around them - or are at least subjected to more of an echo-chamber effect from their peers - which would contribute to anxiety and depression?

Disclosure: "This study was funded in part via an unrestricted research grant from the Beef Checkoff, through the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association."

This is nothing but conjecture, but my suspicion is that neurotically conscientious people are more likely to become vegan, and also more likely to be depressed and anxious.

An anecdote: I have been 100% carnivore for the past two months. The last vegetable I ate was in August. I’ve eaten 10 grams of carbs in that time period (in the form of vitamin C tablets early on), and zero fiber.

My anxiety levels are subjectively lower, I’ve had fewer instances of insomnia, I’ve lost 20lbs of water + fat weight while maintaining an active lifestyle (standing desk all day + running 20+ miles a week). To be honest, I feel great! Much better than I expected I would going into this experiment. Originally I set out to do this in September and October after knowing someone who did something similar, but I may stay on it, or move to a more keto diet because I miss veggies.

My diet is more fat-heavy than it used to be, and certainly more meat-heavy. I used to eat red meat once or twice a month, versus once or twice a day. The lack of fiber does make for some interesting digestion, but in general it seems I’m producing less waste.

What seems to be the biggest impact is FAT. Getting a lot of fat makes me feel a lot better that day. Ketosis has been great too; I can go for a two hour run, then come home and clean my apartment and run errands without feeling like I’m wrecked all day.

It looks like this is a meta-analysis, and the line "Twenty studies met the selection criteria representing 171,802 participants with 157,778 meat consumers and 13,259 meat abstainers." suggests that this is a post hoc analysis so we can't rule out the most obvious confounding variable: are people who care more about externalities (e.g., as they pertain to meat eating, more likely to be depressed or anxious?

Do any of the 20 studies analyzed in this one control for protein and fat consumption?

I get the impression that some vegetarian and/or vegan diets are low in protein and fats, and those proteins and fats have different ratios of the amino and fatty acids than meat does. Vegetable and seed oils tend to be high in linoleic acid in particular and low in saturated fats.

Personally, I have to make a conscious effort to add protein to my diet as someone who doesn't eat much meat and is athletic.

One thing worth noting is this appears to be entirely correlation, not causation.

It's possible that it is not diet, but an additional factor. For example, perhaps people who are worried about their impact on the world are more likely to be depressed and also more likely to be vegetarian/vegan.

If that were the case, it's plausible that the same person, even if they ate meat, would have an identical chance of being depressed.

Another thing to note is that they did not control for anything except sex. My, not totally scientific, observation is that depression and anxiety is more prevalent in people under a certain age, as is concern about the environment, as is veganism. I'd be curious if controlling for age made any difference. Maybe it's just millennials are just a both more-depressed and more-vegetarian cohort.

Levels of meat consumption are also linked to location, and I think depression might be too. I'd be curious if controlling for location made any difference. Maybe people living in big cities are both more likely to be vegetarian (due to restaurants catering to more dietary preferences due to mass of people) and more likely to be depressed.

I personally like the original theory I proposed. Someone who is self-conscious about their existence is more likely to be worried about the environment (especially their personal impact), is more likely to be vegetarian, and also is more likely to be depressed.

I think we need either a proposed nutritional link / mechanism, or a controlled study in which people's diets were changed, to draw the conclusion the title implies.

I'm a meat eater but I find these kind of research bound to find such result from the start.

The vast majority of Vegan and vegos people (citation needed) would naturally be more conscious and sensitive than your burger munching to no-tomorrow typical guy/gal.

This kind of caring for the world and information seeking mammal would be naturally more exposed to anxiety. It's bliss to be a chicken nugget munching idiot, not caring about the environment. Other opposite side of the scale, the information seeking sensitive, often misunderstood vegan is very likely to be more sensitive and overwhelmed, leading to anxiety and depression.

Not to boil down a technical topic into something small, but...

IMO eating meat is something that is considered a societal norm, where it is the abnormal to not eat meat at all. Generally, doing things that the rest of society also does would lead to greater outcomes in terms of fitting in and following the herd.

That's not to say that doing things that society normally does won't lead to mental health impacts.

But eating food is such a social aspect of our lives that we do every day, having to consider dietary impacts each time you eat with other people would surely push my anxiety up. Especially if it was driven based on principle.

Want a possible explanation? General happiness is fueled by consistently spending effort towards your long-term goals, and seeing these goals advance. Such goals must be something you can imagine, something that requires effort, and something you can more or less quantify. Savings, paying off mortgage, gardening, you name it.

When you deprive people of such goals, they start looking around for other things satisfying these criteria. Veganism is spending effort towards reducing animal suffering. It's a noble goal, except it's virtually impossible to quantify. You can sort of proxy it into converting other people to your beliefs (that creates tension), or by finding products that claim to be aligned with your values, but generally you will still be less happy than someone taking care of their own farm animals and seeing them every day.

And the latter type will seldom consider veganism, because they are already happy with their current goals.

This reminds me of the research on alcohol being good for heart disease. Excerpt from Science Vs:

> Eric found that drinking booze… lowered the men’s risk of a heart attack as much as exercising regularly… Which is bonkers!

> So Kaye’s like: ok… all these studies are showing that those who drink have less heart disease than those who don’t… well have you ever thought… who are these non-drinkers in these studies? Like… what kind of person doesn’t drink anything?

> She started looking into the studies that had been done on people who don’t drink and found something kind of shocking. Generally speaking, they were more likely to be unhealthy.

> The people - who did drink… and then stopped… some scientists call them “sick quitters”... Sounds like a bad burn, but basically means they didn't stop drinking because they were running a triathlon, but because they weren’t well.

"People incapable of guilt usually do have a good time." - True Detective

Disclaimer: I eat meat, just less these days :).

Seems like this has a lot more to do with the type of people who abstain from meat vs those who do--rather than the effects of eating meat.

People who abstain from eating meat due to animal compassion (empathy) might be more susceptible to depression due to their empathetic disposition.

It would be interesting to have studies that distinguish between ethical vegans, ethical vegetarians, and cultural/religious vegetarians.

Vegetarianism has been practiced around the world by for thousands of years among Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, some Greeks, etc and there are hundreds of millions of vegetarians worldwide who avoid meat for all sorts of reasons. Some are born into cultures and religions where it is the default, others go out of their way to choose it for ethical or health reasons.

As one example, if studies found different rates of depression in ethical vegetarians compared to cultural/religious vegetarians then that might be an indication that the depression is correlated with the choice to practice a non-standard diet rather than the diet itself.

And when it comes to veganism, that is a smaller and more recent phenomenon. Most of the vegans I know were not raised vegan and consider being vegan to be a major part of their identity, devote significant effort and commitment to it, take supplements, and are often actively involved in some kind of animal welfare activism. Interestingly I've also heard that about three-quarters of vegans are female, which makes me suspect there may be other confounding variables.

Maybe related: depression related to low fat diets, and thus low amounts of cholesterol in the brain. https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/19/ho...

Causal link or no causal link, this definitely lines up with what I've observed among people I've met. A lot of depressed and anxious folks that are vegan or vegetarian compared to the 'go to church twice a week and watch football' crowd.

But it very well may be an "I'm depressed / anxious, and somehow that is linked with me wanting to become vegetarian/vegan" rather than the other direction.

Either way, if I was very depressed or anxious and vegetarian or vegan, and I'd tried a lot of other interventions, I'd definitely consider the option of returning to meat like trying nutrient dense meats like organ meat (heart and liver are great) that are often thrown away or discarded because they are less marketable, or meats that are going to be trashed whether I ate them or not (expiring, or leftovers from someone else's meal? or some grocery store food donation program), and see if it gave me any respite.

How much faith do you have in nutrition science?

How sure are you that they know all the vitamins, fatty acids, amino acids, etc that are important to your health?

We know for sure that there are vitamins that it is pretty much impossible to get with a normal vegan diet (without either taking a supplement or consciously consuming certain foods to supplement) such as vitamin B-12. Other minerals such as iron are more bio-available when consumed as part of meat.

Humans evolved as omnivores. Human nutritional needs evolved based on what an omnivore diet provided. If you think that nutrition science is at the stage where they completely understand all the macro and micro nutrients that meat provides and are confident that supplements can match that, then go for it.

As for me, I don't quite have that confidence.

This is a study where the majority of authors "have previously received funding from the Beef Checkoff, through the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association."

I have way more trust in nutritionfacts.org, which says the opposite:

"Studies on the emotional health and mood states of those eating plant-based diets suggest that eating less meat may not only be good for us physically, but good for us emotionally too."

More here:

https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/depression/

I noticed this anecdotally. I also noticed that people who avoid meat are more susceptible to empathizing with tons of noble causes that make someone stressed. I eat meat.

I’m just here for the confirmation bias, but seriously as others have noted this study was funded by an organization that benefits from this headline being true.

I'm willing to guess that any minority is going to suffer more depression than the majority, in this case meat eaters vs non meat eaters, due to the social stigma. It gets tiring having people hassle you and ask you stupid questions about your lifestyle, eating habits, cultural background, sexual orientation, and so on, which leads to, guess what, more depression and anxiety.

I am curious whether it implies causation or just correlation. I can easily explain it away with correlation. Most likely vegans will be people who are quite attuned to somebody else's (including animal) suffering. And the same empathy my guess would cause a higher level of anxiety. (All of this obviously, my guesses and I don't have any data to prove it)

A lot of people ITT make the claim that vegetarians are inherently more empathetic. I am skeptical.

In my experience, vegetarians are frequently utilitarian. Empathy means understanding another person’s situation and requires placing a high value on personal relationships.

Utilitarians are focused instead on global impact and large scale societal cost/benefit.

I don't feel bad when I eat meat ( physically bad, like tired ). It's easier to not feel mentally bad when I don't feel physically bad. Today I had way more carbs than I normally would, and I'm feeling sluggish. It is certainly having some impact on my emotional chords.

Two of my kids are anemic (iron deficient). After meeting with a phycologist (for a different issue) this year we learned that the symptoms of iron deficiency actually mirror depression. Perhaps it’s not the beef, but the fact it’s a good source of iron?

It’s worth looking into the relationship between carbohydrate consumption and mental health. Many people report a significant mental health benefit from using fat rather than carbohydrates as the primary energy source. Works for me, too.

"In 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that mental illness was the leading cause of disability worldwide"

This is the intro. Wot? I have no idea who Taylor and Francis are but I'll pop them in the noddy bin for now.

Self-proclaimed hackers: Our trades rely on rationality and facts

Also self-proclaimed hackers: Let's all upvote this purely correlational study riddled with conflicts of interest because it makes us feel better about ourselves

I would just remind people that there is a lot of talk about "when i became a vegetarian/vegan". There are many many people that did not become vegetarian, they have always been vegetarian.

I'm not sure about the journals on food science but impact factor 11 would be good in my field (medical). I'd expect a more rigorous statistical analysis from a retrospective meta-study.

Correlation is not causation, many people who are depressed and anxious, give up meat and become Veg/Vegan as they are already suffering and want to change their diet to help.

For any study of meat-diet-stuff, I'd be interested in where people fall who eat meat occasionally, maybe a couple times a week or as an accent to a meal, rather than as the main focus.

Stomach problems are highly correlated to depression. People with stomach problems are probably more likely to have vegetarian diets than the normal population. Voila.

There’s intuitively a link between people who go vegan and are more conscientious leading to higher risks of general anxiety, but that’s my conjecture.

despite being carnivore for years and reducing my anxiety and depression massively from when I was vegetarian, I think it’s best to take nutritional studies with a grain of salt unless they are clinical trials.

Anecdotally meat has definitely helped me with my health in so many countless ways. However, this study can’t prove causations.

This is a fact and if you disagree Big Beef will come after you.

Calling bs as a lifelong vegeterian / vegan.

Filing this under "funny."

So how much of this is correlation with people who eat meat a lot having the money to eat meat a lot?

The lack of proof of causation isn’t evidence for simple correlation.

Being able to hunt for your meat helps a lot with anxiety and mental health.

I’ll be able to provide for my family when things get crazy here soon. Will you be ready?

Anecdotally true IME, however morally inconvenient the source of one's meat may be.

Makes me concerned about the pressure to abstain from eating meat that I've been seeing recently. I wonder if, as a species, the trend away from meat eating will be to our collective detriment.