We do know there are many brain-essential nutrients that are either hard to get from plants, or that plant-based diets actively interfere with, or both. I think this can potentially be addressed, but it's an easy pitfall. The WHO and FAO discuss this problem wrt fortification:
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L. Amber O'Hearn Retweeted L. Amber O'Hearn
These are direct quotes from the linked document.https://twitter.com/ketocarnivore/status/1087054381286010885?s=21 …
L. Amber O'Hearn added,
L. Amber O'Hearn @KetoCarnivoreMy slides on the benefits of meat eating and detriments of a plant based diet. Quotes from: Allen, Lindsay, World Health Organization, and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Guidelines on Food Fortification with Micronutrients. 2006. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/152582146.html …. pic.twitter.com/AiYsT8EAskShow this thread1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes -
Adding to that the several recent reports of deaths or severe handicapping in young children on careless vegan diets is sobering. The adult brain may need less than a growing one, but it's plausible that diets without animal foods could contribute to brain unwellness.
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So, it seems to me that if the epidemiology is weak and conflicting, there may be factors that aren't measured that are coming into play, such as supplementation, or other things that education might be a proxy for.
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On the other hand, there may be causality in the other direction: depressed people seeking to improve their health become vegetarian. It's very unclear.
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Finally (haha, ok, finally for now) I must be upfront with the fact that my own experience deeply colours my expectations here, since I grew up vegetarian and had progressive bipolar disorder as an adult, that has been in remission since stopping eating plants. I can't unsee it,
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even though I know it's a "one off", in a certain sense (though I know others who had the same experience). I don't know why this happened, but I've had a decade to think about it, and have found many ideas to help explain it, or confirm my biases, depending on view.
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Replying to @KetoCarnivore @zoeharcombe
So, here's the interesting point - I don't really see an epidemiological argument here. There's a study comparing a SAD-style diet to Mediterranean-style diets, and a hypothesis based on nutrient deficiency
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And the nutrient deficiencies largely seem to be speaking to a low-quality vegetarian diet - as I'm sure you're aware, these can all be rectified by carefully selecting the foods a person eats
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Replying to @GidMK @zoeharcombe
I said that as well, but the relevance depends on the question. If the question is "Does going on a vegetarian diet tend to cause depression?" That's different from "Does it have to?", because it would be looking at what people do, not what they could do.
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Not a bad point, but I'd say that the idea that there might be vegetarian diets that could be harmful isn't particularly strong theoretically as support for the idea that vegetarian diets cause depression. A bit like saying that meat is bad because wild-rabbit-only diets are bad
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Replying to @GidMK @zoeharcombe
Well, I'm in a funny position, because don't really want to support the idea of saying that a recently turned vegetarian's depression was caused by it, given the state of the science, but the OP was about what happens in practice, not in best case.
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Replying to @KetoCarnivore @zoeharcombe
Right, but even then your theory assumes that vegetarians generally eat a low-quality diet - I'd say right off the bat this is probably not supported by most evidence that I've read
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