Adherence to the EAT-Lancet diet and incident depression and anxiety

A high-quality diet is increasingly recognized as a potential strategy to address the rising prevalence of mental health disorders. This study examines the relationship between adherence to the EAT-Lancet reference diet and the risk of developing depression, anxiety, and their co-occurrence in 180,446 UK Biobank participants. Adherence levels were quantified using three different diet scores. Over an average follow-up period of 11.62 years, participants with the highest adherence to the Knuppel EAT-Lancet index had a reduced risk of depression (hazard ratio: 0.806, 95% CI: 0.730–0.890), anxiety (0.818, 0.751–0.892), and their co-occurrence (0.756, 0.624–0.914) compared to those with the lowest adherence. Similar risk reductions were observed for the Stubbendorff EAT-Lancet index (0.711, 0.627–0.806 for depression; 0.765, 0.687–0.852 for anxiety; 0.659, 0.516–0.841 for co-occurrence) and the Kesse-Guyot EAT-Lancet index (0.844, 0.768–0.928 for depression; 0.825, 0.759–0.896 for anxiety; 0.818, 0.682–0.981 for co-occurrence). These findings indicate that greater adherence to the EAT-Lancet diet is associated with a lower risk of developing depression, anxiety, and both conditions combined.

Year: 2024

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), 5599. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-49653-8

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