The adherence of dietary intake on depressive symptoms among university students

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between food and mental health, especially dietary patterns and their effects on depressive symptoms. Literature review explains the biochemical etiology of depression and the mechanism behind depressive symptoms and diets. The different dietary patterns explored in this study are diets with tryptophan containing foods, Mediterranean diets, healthy diets and diets with enough omega 3. Some past findings reveal that intake of a diet with good amounts of tryptophan containing foods, following a Mediterranean diet, adhering to a healthy diet, and consuming a diet rich in omega 3 might be associated to low depressive symptoms. This relationship has not been well examined among university students: a population at risk of developing both depression and unhealthy eating habits. Student females and males n= 150, from different majors enrolled in a GER required course at the Notre Dame University (NDU) – Louaize and participated in this research. They filled out a survey that contains the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression scale (CESD 20) (Radloff, 1977), which assesses depressive symptoms and three-day 24 hour diet recalls (Shim, Oh, & Kim, 2014) to collect diet intake. Nutri-Pro is a software that was used to analyze the nutrition information gathered, Healthy Eating Index (Guenther et al., 2013) is used to measure diet quality, and the Mediterranean diet Score similar to Tricopoulou (2013) (Tricopoulou et al., 2013) is used to measure adherence to the Mediterranean guidelines. Then tryptophan (Lazaris-Brunner, 1998) and omega 3 cut offs (National Academies Press, 2002) are compared to tryptophan and omega 3 consumptions. SPSS 25 was used for data entry and analysis. Results showed no significance but some tendencies were clearly derived. Fish was found to be negatively related to depressive symptoms with p = 0.047 <0.05 using Pearson Chi- Square. High amounts of legumes and whole grains were associated with low depressive symptoms, while low amounts of meat in females and low amounts of dairy products were associated with low depressive symptoms. Females who did not meet alcohol guidelines, were more at risk for depressive symptoms than males. Women who did not meet Omega 3 requirements, were more at risk for depressive symptoms than men. High tryptophan levels were also linked to low depressive symptoms. Thus, Mediterranean diets and diets with tryptophan containing foods may correspond with lower depressive symptoms in university students. In light of these results, more research is needed to prove the association concerning healthy diets and omega 3 with depressive symptoms.