According to a Spanish study published Wednesday, eating “junk foods” – foods with high levels of trans-fats and saturated fats – increases the risk of depression confirming previous studies.
Researchers also showed that some products, such as olive oil, which is high in healthy omega-9 fatty acids, can fight against the risk of mental illness.
Authors of the wide-reaching study, from the Universities of Navarra and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, followed and analyzed the diet and lifestyle of over 12,000 volunteers over six years. When the study began, none of the participants had been diagnosed with depression; by the end, 657 of them were new sufferers.
“Participants with an elevated consumption of trans-fats (fats present in artificial form in industrially-produced pastries and fast food…) presented up to a 48 percent increase in the risk of depression when they were compared to participants who did not consume these fats,” the head study author said in a statement.
Almudena Sanchez-Villegas, associate professor of preventive medicine at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, also noted that in the event “more trans-fats were consumed, the greater the harmful effect they produced in the volunteers.”
The research team found, at the same time, that after assessing the impact of polyunsaturated fats — composed of larger amounts of fish and vegetable oils — and olive oil, these products “are associated with a lower risk of suffering depression.”
Thus, the results of the study corroborate the hypothesis of a greater incidence of the disease in countries of the north of Europe compared to the countries of the south, where a Mediterranean dietary pattern prevails. Nevertheless, experts have noted that the incidence of the disease has increased in recent years, so that today some 150 million persons are affected worldwide, where it is the principal cause of loss of years of life in those countries with a medium-to-high per capita income.
This due, according to Almudena Sánchez Villegas, “to radical changes in the sources of fats consumed in Western diets, where we have substituted certain types of beneficial fats””polyunsaturated and monounsaturated in nuts, vegetable oils and fish””for the saturated and trans-fats found in meats, butter and other products such as mass-produced pastries and fast food”.
In addition, the research “” published in the online peer reviewed journal PLoS ONE “” has been performed on a population with a low average intake of trans-fats, given that it made up only 0.4% of the total energy ingested by the volunteers. “Despite this, we observed an increase in the risk of suffering depression of nearly 50%. On this basis,” concluded Miguel A. MartÃnez, “we derive the importance of taking this effect into account in countries like the US, where the percentage of energy derived from these foots is around 2.5%”.
Finally, the analysis suggests that both depression as well as cardiovascular disease are influenced in a similar manner by diet, and might share similar mechanisms in their origin. This hypothesis is further suggested by numerous studies that indicate the harmful effect of trans-fats and saturated fats on the risk of cardiovascular disease.
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