Meat and mental health: Meat eaters suffer less depression, anxiety • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by rackjack » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 2:03 AM UTC

girvo wrote: post #88

SavantIdiot wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. I was a localvore before I went vegetarian, and the place where I got my chickens, pork, lamb and beef was ~10 miles from my house. (I live in a hipster city.) I did this because I liked meeting my animals and watching them be butchered. (Industrial meat production is wildly, horrifically cruel by comparison.) Now I'm vegetarian because meat is just too effing expensive when purchased ethically. I ca…

> soy curls TVP, yeah? That stuff is magic, easily my favourite protein source. I can make dishes that blow people away with it

Any recipe in particular you'd be willing to share? I'm interested in expanding my palate.

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

#102

Post by CheezeIt » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 2:03 AM UTC

johnNumen wrote: post #4

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.

The complaint I’d register with this explanation is that neurotic and conscientious are psychological buzzwords. There is certainly some truer way to describe vegans just as briefly.

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

#103

Post by girvo » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 2:03 AM UTC

papercrane wrote: post #96

girvo wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> soy curls TVP, yeah? That stuff is magic, easily my favourite protein source. I can make dishes that blow people away with it

Soy curls are a product from Butler Foods. Not sure if there's a generic equivalent, I haven't found one. Not vegan, but I do try and limit my meat consumption and really love them. https://www.butlerfoods.com/soycurls.html

Yeah the generic version is TVP, textured vegetable protein (made from processed soy). It comes in all kinds too: like those curls, slices that are more like beef slices for stir-fry, and mince-like granules for making "mince"!

Its cheap as, and at tonnes of asian supermarkets or vegan stores.

Rehydrate with beef-style or chicken-style stock and you're off to the races. Some of my friends have started using it to save money on meat despite not being vegan :)

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

#104

Post by jiggunjer » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 2:03 AM UTC

chillingeffect wrote: post #57

jiggunjer wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what diseases are linked to lack of fiber? you have a generous definition of "need". edit: I'm not disputing the benefits of fiber for the average person, but the implied necessity of fiber is just false. Fact: A zero fiber diet is not guaranteed cause disease, whereas essential nutrient deficiencies will cause disease.

effects are listed among others here: https://selfhacked.com/blog/carnivore-diet/

spare me the blogs please. Its not even relevant: don't compare a meat-only diet to a low-fiber diet. All A are B but not all B are A.

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

#105

Post by asoneth » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 2:04 AM UTC

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.

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

#106

Post by jiggunjer » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 2:06 AM UTC

cyounkins wrote: post #67

jiggunjer wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what diseases are linked to lack of fiber? you have a generous definition of "need". edit: I'm not disputing the benefits of fiber for the average person, but the implied necessity of fiber is just false. Fact: A zero fiber diet is not guaranteed cause disease, whereas essential nutrient deficiencies will cause disease.

A bottle of Metamucil, a psyllium husk fiber supplement, indicates on it that helps with "heart health by lowering cholesterol" and "healthy blood sugar levels". I'm sure you can find studies that both support and deny these claims, but I understand the general consensus to be that these claims are supported by science. Heart disease is #1 killer of Americans, diabetes is #7 according to CDC [1]. [1] https://www.cdc.…

food supplements are not medicines. If you claim there is science behind the claims show it. But as you already admitted, it's probably weak evidence.

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

#107

Post by edge17 » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 2:06 AM UTC

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.

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

#108

Post by chinchilla2020 » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 2:07 AM UTC

dahfizz wrote: post #41

King-Aaron wrote: post #9

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 - whi…

I would reverse the causation. People become vegans because they are highly empathetic and emotionally driven - this personality type also is more susceptible to anxiety and depression

I know several vegans and none of them are particularly empathetic.

Is this proven true?

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

#109

Post by stephen_g » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 2:08 AM UTC

TheDong wrote: post #80

Iv wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is easy to lack some vitamins or nutrients while going on a vegan diet. Some of them have an impact on mental health. Unless you are very comited into calculating your intake in every mineral and vitamin, I would recommend to take some supplements if you are going vegan (which is something I support but did not totally go through yet)

Do you have any specific vitamins/nutrients in mind that have relevant mental health impacts? Ones that meat diets get, but vegan/vegetarian diets don't? From what I can tell, meat eaters are even less likely than vegans to calculate their nutritional intake (naturally so, vegans are much more likely to read ingredient and nutrient lists because how else can you shop vegan?), and the claim that it's easy to not have…

K2 seems to stick out to me as one vitamin that would be hard to get, but I'm not sure if it does anything for mental health. It's mostly in animal products (though can be made by bacteria or something which I think is how they make the supplements). If I recall correctly, B12 is potentially problematic too.

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

#110

Post by colordrops » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 2:09 AM UTC

ngoel36 wrote: post #21

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

If you want to see what appears to be a training ground for beef industry propaganda, check out /r/AntiVegan on Reddit. The vitriol is overpowering. I simply quoted a contradictory statistic from a paper a mod posted themselves that supposedly showed that not eating meat is unhealthy, and got banned.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AntiVegan/

It's wild to me how angry and threatened people get by a personal choice to not eat something.