LONDON—An analysis of food and mood data on middle-aged men and women showed that a diet of processed food is a risk factor for depression, while a whole-food diet has a protective effect against depression.
For the study, published in The British Journal of Psychiatry, 3,486 men and women (average age 55.6 years) from the Whitehall II prospective cohort answered a food frequency questionnaire. Based on the responses to how often they had eaten a specific portion size of a food during the previous year, researchers identified two dietary patterns: ‘whole food,’ dominated by consumption of vegetables, fruits and fish; and ‘processed food,’ marked by high intake of sweetened desserts, fried food, processed meat, refined grains and high-fat dairy products.
Five years later, the same participants completed a questionnaire designed to measure depression symptoms. Researchers concluded that a diet of predominantly processed food increased the likelihood of developing depression, and that those with the highest consumption of whole foods were least likely to be depressed.
