One additional serve of fruit per day was associated with a 13% lower risk of depression symptoms in a study of Australian high school students.
This author has a particular aversion to fresh fruit (apples aside) and managed to avoid eating fruit for the entirety of grade 12.
Coincidentally, that was not a great year for my mental health.
Perhaps it was the exams, self-induced expectations, hormones, and having to answer the question, “so what are you going to do next year?” approximately 700 times.
Or maybe it was the lack of fruit. New research published in Child and Adolescent Mental Health followed around 6500 high schoolers across NSW, Queensland, and WA over four years.
Those with higher fruit intake were less likely to report symptoms of depression.
“For each 1-unit increase in fruit intake, the risk of developing depression was 13% lower over the 3-year follow-up, and the risk of developing anxiety was 7% lower, after adjusting for covariates,” the University of Sydney research team wrote.
“The association between fruit intake and depression was comparable for males (adjusted RR: 0.90, 95% CI: 0.81–0.99) and females (adjusted RR: 0.86, 95% CI: 0.80–0.93), but for fruit and anxiety, stratified analyses by sex were non-significant.”
In crushing news for cruciferous greens fans, though, researchers observed no significant associations between vegetable intake and depression or anxiety.
Drinking sugar-sweetened beverages, however, was associated with a higher risk of depression and anxiety onset.
This effect was strong even when adjusted for sex, age, socio-economic status, and physical activity, and was comparatively stronger than the association between fruit intake and common mental disorders.
The magnitude of associations between sugar-sweetened beverage intake and mental disorders was higher for males than for females, particularly in relation to anxiety.
“High school is a time when young people start gaining much more independence over what they eat and drink, at the same time as many mental health problems start to emerge,” study lead author Dr Lily Davidson said.
“We’re not saying eating an apple will prevent depression, or that having a soft drink will cause anxiety – mental health is far more complex than that.
“But what you eat is one part of a young person’s life that can potentially be changed, which makes these findings important from a prevention angle.”
One of the big unanswered questions, Dr Davidson said, was whether depression caused unhealthy eating or whether unhealthy eating contributed to depression.
“By starting with adolescents who weren’t already experiencing elevated symptoms and following them through high school, we could look at whether their dietary intake was associated with the later emergence of those symptoms,” she said.
Would an increase in apples have improved this humble scribe’s adolescent doldrums? I also had an aversion to soft drinks and energy drinks, so perhaps what I lost from my lack of fruit intake, I gained from avoiding sugar-sweetened beverages.
Send your teenage angst to Holly@medicalrepublic.com.au for safekeeping.
