Meat is essential to fending off depression and anxiety, a top nutritionist has revealed, dealing a blow to veganism.
Dr. Georgia Ede, a Harvard-educated nutritional and metabolic psychiatrist, studies the relationship between what we eat and our mental and physical health.
And despite the health glory given to the vegan diet over the past few years, she claims that giving up meat can be harmful to mental health.
“The brain needs meat,” she told me KIRO News Radio.
‘We’re used to hearing that meat is dangerous to our overall health, including our brain health, and plants really are the best way to nourish and protect our brain.’
“But the truth of the matter is that it’s actually — it’s upside down and backwards.”
Dr. Georgia Ede, a Harvard-educated nutritional and metabolic psychiatrist, argues that meat is essential to maintaining mental health
Dr. Ede noted that meat is rich in nutrients such as zinc, vitamin B12 and choline, which are linked to better mental health and are harder to find in vegan foods
Dr. Ede said that while getting enough protein has long been a concern of vegan diets, eating meat is about more than protein.
“It’s actually less about protein and more about all the other nutrients that are inside meat,” she said. ‘You can cover your protein needs through a vegan and vegetarian diet if you plan it carefully.’
Proteins are made up of chemicals called amino acids, which build and repair muscles and bones.
While animal products like eggs, meat, cheese and Greek yogurt are high in protein, it can also be found in vegan options like lentils and broccoli.
“However, many of the other essential nutrients are much more difficult, if not in some cases impossible, to obtain from plants,” said Dr. Ede.
She noted that meat is ‘the only food that contains all the nutrients we need in its proper form and is also the safest food for our blood sugar and insulin levels.’
These nutrients include vitamin B12, omega-3 fatty acids, zinc, choline, iron and iodine.
Vitamin B12, for example, helps with the formation of oxygen-rich red blood cells and DNA. However, it has also been linked to regulation of mood-enhancing serotonin, and low levels of serotonin have been associated with increased risk of depression and anxiety.
Many people are sold veganism on the benefits that it can help with weight loss and even reduce the risk of some types of cancer. But switching to the diet also carries a number of health risks because it can lead to someone becoming deficient in nutrients normally acquired from vitamins and animal products
In addition, a review in the magazine Frontiers in Pharmacology found that lower levels of zinc were associated with depression, as zinc can reduce inflammation in the brain.
Several studies have suggested that meat eaters have better mental health.
ONE 2021 systematic review of 18 studies compared meat eaters and non-meat eaters. The research included 160,257 participants aged 11 to 96 (53 percent of whom were female), including 149,559 meat eaters and 8,584 meat avoiders.
Of these, 11 studies found that meat-free diets were associated with poorer mental health outcomes. One of these studies found that vegetarians had a 35.2 percent chance of developing major depression compared to 19.1 percent for meat eaters.
Additionally, vegetarians had a 31.5 percent chance of developing an anxiety disorder compared to 18.4 percent for meat eaters.
A study released in 2022 studied 14,000 Brazilians between the ages of 35 and 74 and found that those who followed a vegan diet had twice the risk of depression – even though they had the same nutrient intake as meat eaters.
And one meta-analysis published in 2020 and including 160,000 meat eaters and 8,500 meat abstainers also found that those who cut meat from their diet were significantly more likely to be depressed.
Despite gaining a healthy halo over the years, new research suggests that the vegan diet may have other lasting health consequences.
A 2023 report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), for example, looked at more than 500 studies and concluded that animal sources of food offer “important sources of much-needed nutrients.”
The agency noted that these macro- and micronutrients are difficult to find “in the required quality and quantity” when following a vegan diet.
In addition, meat, eggs and milk are ‘particularly vital’ for children, young people and the elderly as well as pregnant and lactating women.
ONE 2019 paper also noted that a deficiency of vitamin B12, which is more common in vegans, may increase the risk of stroke.
This was because its absence inhibits the secretion of proteins from the bloodstream, leading to inflammation – which in turn increased the likelihood of blood vessels being damaged. This is an important risk factor for stroke.
Adults need about 2.4 mg of vitamin B12 a day to function normally, US officials say.