Meat-eaters Have Better Psychological Health Than Vegetarians
Here’s something that meat-eaters may want to hear. A study published in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition last year found that people who eat meat tend to have better psychological health than vegetarians. It found that vegetarians/vegans were at a greater risk of depression, anxiety, and self-harm, compared to meat-eaters. Urska Dobersek, an assistant professor at the University of Southern Indiana, and team reviewed 18 previous studies on the relationship between meat consumption and psychological health. Altogether the studies included 149,559 meat-consumers and 8,584 meat-abstainers from Europe, Asia, North America, and Oceania.
Though they found “clear evidence” that meat-abstainers tended to have higher rates or risk of depression, anxiety, and self-harm compared to meat-eaters, they were not clear about the causal relationship between avoidance of meat and psychological health.