EAT-Lancet Diet Linked to Reduced Risks of Depression and Anxiety claims study

The findings emphasize that encouraging this attainable and sustainable dietary pattern could have significant benefits for preventing depression and anxiety.

High-quality diets are increasingly recognized as a promising strategy to combat the rising prevalence of mental health disorders. The EAT-Lancet diet, established by a global commission in 2019, promotes a balanced intake of plant-based foods while minimizing red meat and processed products. Chaofu Ke, Suzhou Medical College of Soochow University, Suzhou, China, and colleagues aimed to investigate the prospective associations of adhering to the EAT-Lancet reference diet with incident depression, anxiety and their co-occurrence in 180,446 UK Biobank participants.

The research involved UK Biobank participants who had completed an online 24-hour food recall questionnaire at least once. Individuals were excluded if they had withdrawn, had anxiety or depression, used anxiolytics, or reported abnormal energy intakes. The study focused on 70,000 participants who provided additional dietary data through the Oxford WebQ over several months.

Using the EAT-Lancet diet index, researchers assessed adherence to sustainable dietary recommendations and analyzed its association with anxiety and depression using three diet scores: the Knuppel, Kesse-Guyot, and Stubbendorff indices. Participants were followed until they experienced an outcome, died, or reached the last follow-up date in March 2021.

Illness outcomes were identified through self-reports, primary care, hospital records, and death registries, using ICD-10 codes for anxiety and depression. Cox proportional hazard regressions calculated hazard ratios, considering various factors like age, gender, BMI, and lifestyle behaviors.

The EAT-Lancet diet index was compared to other dietary scores using a net reclassification improvement index, with sensitivity analyses conducted to ensure robustness by excluding certain groups and focusing on recent dietary assessments. The study explored links between dietary adherence and mental health outcomes through component analysis and mediation studies.

Based on the study, the researchers reported the following findings:

• Over 11.62 years of follow-up, 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), compared to the lowest adherence group.
• 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.

The prospective study found that greater adherence to the EAT-Lancet reference diet, as indicated by three different diet scores, was linked to reduced risks of depression, anxiety, and their co-occurrence.

"These results underscore the potential benefits of promoting this attainable and sustainable dietary pattern for preventing mental health issues," the researchers concluded.

Reference:

Lu, X., Wu, L., Shao, L., Fan, Y., Pei, Y., Lu, X., Borné, Y., & Ke, C. (2024). Adherence to the EAT-lancet diet and incident depression and anxiety. Nature Communications, 15(1), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-49653-8