New Research: Junk food is depressing, literally

We all know that a rotten diet leads to a plethora of physiological problems, including diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, ADHD, Alzheimer's, and obesity. According to new research out of Harvard, there's now a new ailment to add to the list: depression.

Unfortunately, the media (including Fox News) has already taken this useful research and distorted into misinformation that's about as helpful as a bottled fart. Instead of explaining that an "inflammatory diet pattern"--made up largely of refined carbs, added sugars, artificial sweeteners, fatty meat, and fried food--has been linked to depression, the study has been distilled down in many media outlets to "Pasta causes depression." Not even vaguely correct.

(By the way, for those of you still stuck on the "bottled fart" comment. It does actually works, but please don't tell your wife that I'm the guy who taught you that.)

The faulty news reports do dismissively brush over the more concrete details several paragraphs down, but by then the damage is done. After reading a noodle-bashing headline and the first couple anti-pasta sentences, most micro-mini attention-span readers (i.e. Americans) will come to the conclusion that if they switch their Wednesday night pasta feed at Olive Garden to all-you-can-eat wings at Hooters they'll be happy campers.

Even one of the study's co-authors, Dr. Michel Lucas, has gone on record stating that the press has oversimplified his work.

So here's some more accurate reporting on the study, broken down into bullet points to better help you explain it to the slob with spicy Buffalo wing stains all over his XXL t-shirt harping on you for eating your  healthy bowl of whole grain spaghetti with chicken and mushrooms.

• The offending food wasn't just pasta. Yes, refined wheat "white" noodles can be part of the problem, but the depression was actually linked to an over-all unhealthy diet filled with the foods I noted above. If you want to point a finger at a carb, I think you're better off going after refined flour products in general, including white bread, rice, tortillas, etc.

• Inflammation is the key. We've known for a while that chronic, low-grade inflammation is linked to depression--but what's causing the inflammation? This study is attempting to answer that question. If you want my opinion (and I know you do), there are lots of things that cause chronic inflammation, including lack of sleep, smoking, and environmental stress, so I'd lump those factors in there too as possible depression-inducers.

• The study isn't entirely new. Years ago, Harvard collected a massive amount of data from thousands of female nurses. The result was the Nurses' Health Study. Since then, scores of studies have come out using this data to draw conclusions on everything from cancer to contraception. So researchers didn't feed a few ladies some lasagna and then hook them up to a machine to see if they got bummed out. This is data collected from an epidemiological. Therefore...

• They didn't discover a direct, biochemical connection between depression and bad diet. What they did discover is that there's probably a link between diets that cause inflammation and depression. In other words, there might be a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg conundrum here. (But probably not. The diet is most likely causing the depression.)

• All 38,000+ subjects were women. That didn't seem to matter to anyone else, but I think it's worth noting. Men and women, last I checked, have some major hormonal difference and I'm betting hormones play a part in this chain.

Here's some further food for thought about this study. This isn't the only way crap food and depression are linked. A big sugar hit can crank your serotonin (feel-good hormone) levels, so depressed people might crave comfort foods in a subconscious effort to lift their spirits. But here's the problem: eating an apple fritter  might sooth your soul in the short term, but if this new research is correct, your doughy indulgence will only deepen your depression in the long run.

So next time you feel yourself dipping, here is another thing known serotonin booster: Exercise. The science on the positive impacts of fitness on depression are fairly impressive. And here's the best part of all. When you work out regularly, it's important to fuel up. And one great way to carb load for a big day of cycling, surfing, hiking, or P90X is--you guessed it--pasta! (Whole grain, of course.)

Take that, Fox News!