Healthy and Sustainable Diet Beneficial for the Prevention of Depression and Anxiety

A prospective UK population-based cohort study suggests that higher adherence to the EAT-Lancet diet is associated with lower risks of incident depression, anxiety and their co-occurrence. The study included 180,446 participants (mean age 56.2, male 46.45%) with 11.62 years of follow-up. The diet largely consists of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts, unsaturated oils, and moderate amount of seafood and poultry, with no or a low quantity of red/processed meat, added sugar, refined grains, and starchy vegetables. Degrees of adherence to the diet were translated into three common yet differently quantified diet scores. Compared to the lowest adherence group, participants in the highest adherence group of the Knuppel EAT-Lancet index showed lower risks of depression (hazard ratio: 0.806), anxiety (0.818) and their co-occurrence (0.756). The corresponding hazard ratios were 0.711, 0.765 and 0.659 for the Stubbendorff EAT-Lancet index, and 0.844, 0.825 and 0.818 for the Kesse-Guyot EAT-Lancet diet index, respectively.  The associations between adhering to the EAT-Lancet diet and incident depression and anxiety were more pronounced in those who were more deprived. The findings indicate modestly better performance than or comparable to other established diet scores and highlight that the healthy and sustainable dietary pattern might have far-reaching benefits. Mental health disorders affect almost 30% of individuals across their lifespan and were the seventh leading cause of disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) with depression and anxiety ranked first and second contributors to DALYs in 2019. Higher adherence to the EAT-Lancet diet has been associated with lower risks of multiple diseases: type 2 diabetes, ischemic heart disease and subarachnoid stroke, and all-cause and cause-specific mortality. Source: https://www.nature.com/