So on r/Paleo somebody posted a study showing that
vegetarians have a higher incidence of mental disorders. The gist of it is that they direct-matched data from vegetarians with non-vegetarians and predominantly-vegetarian-eaters and found that depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, and somatoform disorders are more common in vegetarians. More interestingly, the onset of these disorders tends to happen
after people go vegetarian.
Do we really know why? No. There are undoubtedly paleo and primal eaters out there who believe it is a nutritional thing... I don't. As an ex-vegan, I have my own way of looking at this, by which I mean this finding is not shocking when you consider what disorders we're talking about. And while vegetarianism is not an inherently healthy lifestyle, I don't think it's due to the common nutritional errors in thinking vegetarians tend to make. I think it has to do with the kind of mental environment they are in.
Depression and anxiety are both chemical and social disorders. What I mean by that is that there are plenty of people who get depression and anxiety for what feels like absolutely no reason... there are plenty of others, though, that get depression and anxiety due to outside pressures. In 2006 I was working on a political campaign for several months that led to harassment and property damage. Even worse, we
lost. It got to the point where several of us needed psychiatrists because we were suffering from anxiety and depression. I would have panic attacks over the phone to my parents. And actually, during Wisconsin's recall election the same thing happened for the same reason.
Now think about the social environment of the vegetarian, especially the vegan. Vegans are in the position where
they believe 99% of the people they care for, that they associate with, that they are surrounded by every day are supporting cruel and murderous practices. They are aware that animals are being killed by humans by the thousands in their own backyards and that there is very little they can actually do about that. And while this comparison is inaccurate and rightfully seen as absolutely insensitive to most non-vegetarians, vegans easily view this as an animal holocaust that everybody seems to support except them.
Pile in the fact that people often outright refuse to accommodate their eating choices and make them the constant butt of jokes. They're guilted by relatives for not eating the turkey, they constantly have to ask for modifications when they go out to eat at a restaurant, and they have to deal with a lot of insensitivity from other people.
This is enough to make anybody extremely anxious and depressed. So that doesn't surprise me.
Then you have somatoform disorders. These are maladies for which there is no apparent medical cause... hypochondria, for instance. And
every restrictive diet makes it easy to have somatoform conditions. Have you ever witnessed a long-term vegetarian accidentally eat something with meat in it? Some of them are chill about it, if annoyed, but there are a
lot of them who will dramatically freak out over it, thinking they're really ill. When I was at summer camp somebody put pepperoni in the spaghetti, which one of the vegetarians ate. She bawled for hours. People were reassuring her on ethical grounds without realizing that it wasn't because she had killed an animal, it was because she hadn't eaten meat since she was three years old and vegetarian culture--and her parents--had told her time and time again that she could no longer handle meat. My vegetarian friends
seriously do feel that this is going to make them violently ill. One of my Facebook friends recently wrote a rant about how using the same knife to cut meat and then cut vegetables could cause a vegetarian to become sick because she "can't handle it anymore."
Alright, let's be really fucking blunt here: Vegetarians are not going to get sick if they eat meat unless they have a legitimate (and rare) intolerance to it. But they
aren't just being dramatic, either. When I was a vegetarian I decided I would try freeganism and bit into quesadilla made with ingredients I had rescued from being thrown down the garbage disposal. Because I still had that vegetarian mindset, though, I wound up vomiting and getting a stomachache. When I flat out gave up vegetarianism in favor of paleo, the first thing I ate was a steak. I hadn't eaten meat in six years at that point (the quesadilla incident having been far gone) and suffered
no ill effects.
The problem with using this to damn vegetarianism is that it's common among all restrictive diets, like I said before. Personally? I feel really ill when I eat grain, especially whole wheat. Even when I decided paleo wasn't necessary, whole wheat gave me a stomachache the entire time. But
I can't entirely rule out the possibility that it is entirely somatic, because other paleo and primal eaters constantly talk about how much sugar and grain make them feel sick. I have no doubt it does, and it's a perfectly good reason not to eat it... but without actual tests, we just don't know. Just using testimonials we'd have to assume that everything anybody ever omits on a restrictive diet makes people ill. Meat, grain, fruit, dairy, cooked food, raw food, Jesus, we can't eat anything without becoming violently ill!
The point here is, of course, that studies like this don't actually damn vegetarianism... all they really do for me is confirm what I already know about it, which is that culturally vegetarianism is great at churning out certain mental disorders.
On the other hand, though, not many environments
aren't.
