Health Desk : dhakamirror.com
No one ever claimed that fried foods were healthy, but a new research suggests that the humble chippie may actually be having a negative impact on our mental health, with fried foods being associated with higher rates of anxiety and depression.
What’s more, the mental effect of fried food was allegedly stronger in young men and younger eaters in general.
A research team in Hangzhou, China published the study in the PNAS journal, claiming that the continuous consumption of fried foods – particularly fried potatoes – correlated with a 7 per cent higher risk of depression and a 12 per cent higher risk of anxiety, in comparison to those who did not eat fried goods at all.
However, before you start cursing your local chippie shop and swearing off fish and chips night indefinitely, nutrition experts have noted that their findings are preliminary and that it is not necessarily certain whether fried foods were the driving force behind the decline in mental wellness, or if, in fact, people experiencing depression or anxiety may be turning to fried foods for comfort.
The study assessed a test group of 140,728 people over a time span of 11.3 years.
After cutting people from the study who were diagnosed with depression within the first two years, a total of 12,735 cases of depression and 8294 cases of anxiety were found in those who frequently ate fried food.
What’s more, fried potatoes were specifically revealed to increase the risk of depression by 2 per cent when compared with “fried white meat”, such as fried chicken.
“The human component of this study may indicate just what it purports: that higher intake of fried food increases the risk of anxiety/depression,” a lifestyle medicine specialist told CNN.
Dr David Katz, who was actually not involved in the study, added: “However, the causal pathway could just as readily go the other way: people with anxiety/depression turn to ‘comfort food’ with increasing frequency for some semblance of relief.”
He went on to say that a general absence of variety when consuming food has also been proven to affect people’s wellbeing for the worst.
Bad nutrition and food that is deemed unhealthy can cause a decline in a person’s mood and worsen their mental state, another study found.
Researchers referenced the recent rise in depression and anxiety across the globe, with the former rising 27.6 per cent and the latter rising 25.6 per cent in 2020.
The World Health Organisation approximates that more than 5 per cent of adults suffer from depression worldwide.