A friend recently visiting from India told us that fast-food restaurants in India serving Pizzas, Burgers, Croissants etc had mushroomed there and are now wildly popular with the younger generation, particularly in the cities (food courts, malls and even residential neighborhoods).

Our friend’s remark on Indian fast-food places came to mind when we stumbled upon a Spanish study linking consumption of fast-food with depression.

Fast food in the context of the Spanish study refers to pizzas, burgers, sausages, doughnuts, muffins, croissants etc.

Fast Food = Bad Health

That a lot of fast food in America and elsewhere is extremely unhealthy has been written about by several authors, made into films and generally beaten to death.

Despite the widespread publicity of the harmful effects of fast food, the idiots keep stuffing themselves with that junk.

Well, if you ask us we’ve always considered the Sapiens part of Homo Sapiens to be much overrated.

While knowledge of fast-food contributing to bad health is well known, it comes as an unwelcome surprise that junk food also leads to bad mental health.

Now Spanish researchers Almudena Sánchez-Villegas, Estefania Toledo, Jokin de Irala, Miguel Ruiz-Canela, Jorge Pla-Vidal and Miguel A Martínez-Gonzáleza have recently published a research article in the academic journal Public Health Nutrition titled Fast-food and commercial baked goods consumption and the risk of depression.

The authors conclude that eating fast-food and commercial baked goods may have a detrimental effect on depression risk.

In plain English, it means eating fast food causes depression.

There’s also a dose-response relationship between fast food and depression. So if you eat more fast food, the greater your risk of depression.

An excerpt from the study says:

Participants belonging to consumption quintiles Q2–Q5 showed an increased risk of depression compared with those belonging to the lowest level of consumption

Indian Scenario

Now consider that India’s population is about 1.3 billion people (the way those mosquitoes breed, it could well be a lot higher).

Given the high economic growth rate in recent years, the burgeoning middle class and entry of more women into the work-force, we’re going to take a reasonable 9% of that population as frequent consumers of fast-food like Pizzas, Burgers, croissants, donuts etc.

Do the math and you get a whopper of a figure – 100 million.

This means that 100 million Indian chutias who stuff their anterior orifices aka mouths with all that junk food are already depressed or will soon be.

In our view, depression is often related to suicide, homicide, road-rage, obesity and a variety of other problems.

Depression is said to currently affect 124 million worldwide but we consider that a ridiculously low estimate.

Food containing B vitamins, omega-3 fatty acids and olive oil can help to prevent depression.

We think this is the best of times for psychiatrists and lawyers in India. 😉

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Fast-food and commercial baked goods consumption and the risk of depression
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