The link between vegetarian diet and depression might be explained by depression among meat-reducers

Abstract

Recent studies have reported an association between vegetarian diet and depression, although results have been inconsistent. This effect has most often been attributed to nutritional deficits among vegetarians. An alternative possibility is that individuals who are trying to reduce their meat intake experience cognitive dissonance related to enjoying meat on the one hand and being aware of the ethical problems with eating animals on the other. The tendency to include such individuals in vegetarian samples in previous research could explain recently reported effects. The goal of this study was to compare depression in meat-eaters, meat-reducers, and vegetarian/vegans in terms of depression to test this hypothesis. I compared depression scores across three measures in two large North American community samples between meat-eaters, meat-reducers, and vegetarian/vegans. Meat-reducers had higher depression scores than either meat-eaters or vegetarian/vegans. This finding suggests a novel explanation for previous findings and orients this field towards somewhat new questions and research directions.