We’ve all been there. You’re sitting in your living room or driving down the road, and suddenly, you have a hankering for something sweet—whether it be a drink or something to eat. While it might be tempting to indulge in that sweet tooth, you should do it in moderation because a new study claims to have found a link between overeating sugary foods and drinks and depression.
The new study, published in the Journal of Translational Medicine, digs deeper into the food preferences of over 180,000 volunteers from the UK Biobank. The researchers used AI to help sort through the group, breaking them into three main groups based on the different foods they preferred to eat.
Then, using the group’s “food personality types,” the researchers found that the people who leaned more into sugary foods like sweet treats and sugary drinks were often 31 percent more likely to suffer from depression in some form or another. Beyond this surprising link between overeating sugary foods and depression, the researchers also found those groups had higher rates of heart problems and diabetes.
All of this is absolutely concerning news for people who often indulge their sweet tooth—sometimes to the point of overdoing it. Of course, some of it isn’t exactly surprising. The link between sugary foods and diabetes has long been studied and known, and that’s one reason that people push for healthier food options.
And altogether, foregoing sugar isn’t the only answer here. In fact, the British Nutrition Foundation says that, on average, adults in the U.K. tend to get between nine to 12.5 percent of their daily calories from “free sugars.” These are the sugars added to drinks and food that aren’t naturally found in whole fruits and vegetables. While you don’t have to remove this entirely from your diet, you still need to be mindful of what you’re taking in.
If the link between overeating sugary foods and drinks and depression is indeed real—which we have every reason to believe—then avoiding more of those processed sugars and going for the more natural stuff is going to be key to keeping your body healthy.
A better understanding of how different foods and drinks can affect our health is important, too, because this information is always changing. For years, people thought moderate drinking was okay, but new studies have shown that might not be the case at all and that even occasional drinking is bad for your health. Considering we’re still trying to uncover all the links between depression and our bodies, understanding the part food plays will hopefully help fill in the gaps in that ongoing puzzle.
