Food misinformation can stunt your mental health during lockdown

Misinformation shared on the internet about healthy food choices can prevent you from fuelling your body and brain with the correct nutrition, that can further place stress on your mental health during lockdown.

Mental health experts believe that the lockdown regulations are causing a large psychological epidemic in South Africa, as the SA Depression and Anxiety Group has reported receiving more calls for anxiety, loneliness and depression since the start of the lockdown, according to IOL.

Along with the fears people are experiencing due to Covid-19, other issues including claustrophobia, financial stress and conflict with family members has triggered emotional and existential turmoil, according to Suntosh Pillay, a clinical psychologist in the public sector, IOL reports. 

Studies have shown that there’s a link between healthy food choices and mental health. 

“Even though there isn’t a single food that will improve your mental health, a healthy balanced diet plays a critical role in keeping you both healthy and happy during the lockdown,” The Hello Doctor Team, an online health organisation who provides medical advice via mobile phones, reports. 

Evidence shows that a balanced and diverse diet including an increased consumption of plant-based food, such as vegetables and fruit, legumes, nuts, seeds, whole grains; and a moderate consumption of animal source foods, is key to a healthy diet as it provides rich nutrients to the brain and body. 

However, misleading claims about nutrition is widely shared on the internet, causing people to fuel their minds and bodies incorrectly and inefficiently. 

People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) believe that “there is no nutritional need for humans to eat any animal product; all our dietary needs, even as infants and children, are best supplied by a meatless diet”. 

According to Irene Labuschagne, a principle dietician at Nutrition Information Centre Stellenbosch (NICUS), the statement by PETA is misleading, as it depends on the diversity, nutrient quality and nutrient quantity people consume. 

“The scientific literature is clear that by increasing vegetables, fruit and whole grains and consuming 400-500ml of milk or its equivalent per day, two to three servings of fish per week, about four eggs per week and alternatively not more than 560g of meat per week, will be nutrient-sound without increasing risks of chronic diseases,” Labuschagne said in an email. 

Evidence shows that plant-based diets are environmentally more sustainable and offer nutritional benefits. According to Labuschagne, carefully planned healthy vegetarian diets have been found to reduce the risk of certain health conditions, including ischemic heart disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, certain types of cancer, and obesity.

However, diets based on healthy whole grain plant foods, adequate amounts of fruit and vegetables and high quality animal foods, can be equally beneficial and healthy. “It depends on the daily food choices and quantities of foods consumed,” Labuschagne said. 

Professor Salomé Kruger, a Nutrition Professor at North-West University (NWU), agrees withLabuschagne and argues that PETA’s claim is misleading as all our dietary needs, even as infants and children, are not best supplied by a meatless diet. 

“There are many groups in the world that follow meatless diets, and they proved that all their dietary needs, even as infants (receiving breast milk) and children, could be supplied by a meatless diet. A vegetarian/vegan diet has several health benefits, such as lower fat and higher fibre content, but diets containing moderate amounts of meat can also best supply all our dietary needs,” Kruger said in an email interview. 

The World Health Organization (WHO) agrees and recommends the consumption of animal products for a healthy diet, according to Collins Boakye-Agyemang, communications adviser at the WHO Regional Office for Africa.

“Animal source foods are the optimal source of proteins that contain essential amino acids (those that the body cannot synthesise) and highly bio-available micronutrients,” he said in an email interview. 

The keys to a healthy diet that WHO proposes includes the consumption of a variety of foods, “including staple foods (e.g. cereals such as wheat, barley, rye, maize or rice, or starchy tubers or roots such as potato, yam, taro or cassava), legumes (e.g. lentils, beans), vegetables, fruit and foods from animals sources (e.g. meat, fish, eggs and milk).”

Authors from The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Livestock Systems and Department of Animal Sciences  at the University of Florida and Kansas State University in the United States of America, released a paper where they examine food security: “the condition in which all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”; and nutritional security: “when all people at all times consume food of sufficient quantity and quality in terms of variety, diversity, nutrient content and safety to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”. 

Their findings correlate with the information above and specifically show that scarcity and a limited intake of animal source foods for pregnant and lactating women, and infants and young children, even when caloric requirements are being met, can lead to physical, emotional, and cognitive stunting with lifelong impacts. 

“Animal source foods provide a balance of appropriate amino acids, and hence, high quality protein. Animal source foods are also the sole source of specific nutrients, including vitamin B12 and essential fatty acids integral to brain development,” the authors wrote.

Malnutrition within pregnant and lactating women, and infants and young children is therefore associated with several nutritional deficiencies that suggest a link to a lack of consumption of animal source foods, according to the paper.

However,evidence in the paper show that an excess intake of some animal source foods may affect obesity incidence and illnesses that come along with it. Any result of any food consumption therefore depends on the responsibility of the food consumer to ensure a consumption classified by nutrient diversity, nutrient quality and nutrient quantity, as Labuschagne pointed out earlier. 

Another case study on “micronutrient nutrition and animal source foods”, published in May this year by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Society for Nutrition, confirms the above findings about the human nutritional need for animal source foods: 

“Because they provide a balanced and more complete array of essential micronutrients, animal source foods have historically been an important part of a  healthy food system. It has been suggested that the higher prevalence of micronutrient deficiencies in low and middle income countries may, in part, be associated with limited access to or use of animal source foods. As a result, it has been suggested that improving access to and availability of animal source foods should assume a larger role as part of the global toolkit to address the global micronutrient challenge.”

However, this study also emphasises that “problems exist in terms of putative health consequences from greater consumption of animal source foods”. This correlates with what Labuschagne shared on the daily food choices and quantities of foods people consume, as food consumers, as explained, carry the responsibility of making daily choices on the quality and quantity of nutrients they consume. 

The claim that there is no nutritional need for humans to consume any animal products is therefore a misleading one to make. All our dietary needs, even as infants and children, are not best supplied by a meatless diet, but rather best supplied by a healthy balanced diet combining an increased intake of plant-foods and a moderate consumption of animal source foods. Furthermore, in some cycles of the human life, like pregnant and lactating women and infants and young children, a lack of consumption of animal source foods can cause serious damage to the growth and development of the human body. 

An increased consumption of plant-based food is therefore recommended, but that does not eliminate the nutritional need to consume animal source foods. Evidence shows that a balanced and diverse diet including a moderate consumption of animal source foods is key to a healthy diet that can consequently boost your mental health during lockdown.

Here is a video by Africa Check, Africa’s first independent fact-checking organisation, to help you detect misinformation like above online.