Research Shows Low Fat Diet Makes People Moody!

Low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets worsen mood states in both humans and animals.

By Anthony Colpo, April 18, 2004.

In 1998, U.K. researchers reported the results of an experiment involving twenty healthy male and female volunteers. One group continued was placed on a 41% fat diet, while the other group consumed a 25% fat diet. After 4 weeks had passed, the groups were swapped around so that those originally on the low-fat diet were now consuming the high-fat diet, and vice-versa. Throughout the study, all meals were prepared by the university conducting the study and supplied to the participants. Both diets were specially designed to be as palatable and similar in taste as possible.

At the beginning and end of each diet period, every subject underwent a battery of psychological assessments, including various mood state questionnaires and an interview by a psychiatrist who was blinded to the participant's dietary status.

The study was tightly-controlled and adherence to the diets appears to have been high. HDL cholesterol levels declined during the low-fat period, a typical response on low-fat, high-carb diets, indicating that subjects ate the foods as supplied.

I feel fine, you #$%@!

What the researchers found was that, while ratings of anger-hostility slightly declined during the high-fat diet period, they significantly increased during the low-fat, high-carb diet period!

Tension-anxiety ratings declined during the high-fat period, but did not change during the four weeks of low-fat, high-carb eating.

Ratings of depression declined slightly during the high-fat period, but increased during the low-fat, high-carb period, mainly due to two of the low-fat subjects reporting significantly greater depression-dejection ratings.

As the researchers stated, the participants of this study were "a psychologically robust group who had never previously suffered from depression or anxiety, and who were not going through any 'stressful' events during the study." They further stated that "The alterations in mood observed in the present study may have been greater if subjects were feeling more stressed or were more susceptible to mental illness."

These observations raise some interesting questions. Could the low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets that have been so heavily promoted over the last thirty years be at least partially responsible for increases in anti-social behavior witnessed during the same period?

That the answer could well be in the affirmative is supported by studies with our primate cousins...

Monkey business turns nasty on low-fat diet!

For 22 months, adult male monkeys were fed a "luxury" diet - (43% calories from fat, 0.34 mg cholesterol/Calorie of diet) or a "prudent" diet (30% calories from fat, 0.05 mg cholesterol/Calorie of diet).

Researchers observed that the low-fat diet monkeys were more irritable and initiated more aggression than the "luxury" diet animals. Hey, I'd be pretty damn ticked too if I had to follow a low-fat diet for almost 2-years!

The prudent diet resulted in lower total serum cholesterol levels. While our dopey health authorities automatically assume this is a good thing, the researchers noted: "These results are consistent with studies linking relatively low serum cholesterol concentrations to violent or antisocial behavior in psychiatric and criminal populations and could be relevant to understanding the significant increase in violence-related mortality observed among people assigned to cholesterol-lowering treatment in clinical trials."

If you don't want to end up a nasty old grump, then it might pay to regularly sink your teeth into a nice, fat, juicy steak!

C'mon, you know you want it...

References

Wells AS, et al. Alterations in mood after changing to a low-fat diet. British Journal of Nutrition, Jan, 1998; 79 (1): 23-30.

Kaplan JR, et al. The effects of fat and cholesterol on social behavior in monkeys. Psychosom Med. 1991 Nov-Dec; 53 (6): 634-642.

Source: The Omnivore