Prevalence and psychopathology in vegetarians and vegans - results of a representative study in Germany.

Paslakis, G., Richardson, C., Nöhre, M. etal. Prevalence and psychopathology of vegetarians and vegans - results of a representative survey in Germany. SCI Rep 10, 6840 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-63910-y

Commentary

The study was investigating the prevalence and attitudes of vegetarianism and total veganism. It also assessed the association between vegetarianism/veganism and eating disorders, depressive symptoms, and physical symptoms.

A cross-sectional questionnaire survey of German adults representative in terms of age, gender, and education level was conducted and included data from 2449 adults (53.5% female). A total of 5.4% of participants reported following a vegan or completely vegetarian diet.

The majority of participants agreed that vegetarian diets are healthy and harmless (56.1%), but only 34.8% believed this to be true for complete vegetarian diets.

The majority of participants believed that a vegetarian (58.7%) or full vegetarian (74.7%) diet could lead to nutritional deficiencies, and that female gender, younger age, higher education, lower body mass index (BMI), and higher depression and eating disorder symptoms were associated with vegetarianism/full vegetarianism.

There was no increase in physical complaints in the vegetarian/vegan group, and these results indicate a moderate prevalence of vegetarianism/complete veganism among the general population.

The findings suggest that health care professionals should keep in mind the pathology of eating disorders, the emotional state, when dealing with individuals who choose a vegetarian/completely vegan eating pattern.