Came here to say this…
If only they’d have thought of learning even the most basic facts about depression first, they could have saved themselves a lot of time and money.
But I suspect they were never looking to improve the lives of depressed people, but rather just to get on the latest buzzword-bandwagon that vilifies “ultra-processed foods” but never offers any viable alternative, let alone addresses the reasons why people consume, or even rely on it in the first place, and who benefits from making and selling it (because the answer is capitalism, and the capitalists funding these waste-of-resources hollow research projects wouldn’t fund one that points the finger back at them).
This nonsense is just as much a distraction and a shifting of responsibility from systemic to personal as plastic bans and made up “carbon footprint” are.
As a person with Dysthymia, shit like this pisses me off to no end. I’ve dealt with depression most of my life and I’ve lived many different lifestyles, super healthy and fit, eating very healthy and the complete opposite of the spectrum, binge eating, super overweight, getting destroyed by diabetes, and the one constant has always been the depression. Articles like this, as you say, are just a distraction and putting the blame on the victim. They obviously have an agenda to attack process foods and artificial sweeteners and depression is not the reason they are attacking them.
I’ve dealt with depression most of my life and I’ve lived many different lifestyles…and the one constant has always been the depression.
yup, same.
And then this shit is not only unhelpful to us, but it also makes many people (including, sadly health and care professionals) think that if we only took as good a care of ourselves as they do (they tell themselves), we wouldn’t be depressed (and, in a lot of their minds, a “drain” on them and/or society). It’s all so fucked up, but none of it is accidental.
Oh man, I just had this conversation with my mom last weekend. The same “if you just stop X, then maybe you won’t be so depressed”. This time is was thinking about government and societal issues. I don’t know how to get to understand that so much of what I “think” or “worry” about it just who I am and I can’t stop, in the same way she can’t just stop thinking about her children. It’s just me and yeah, it is probably affecting my depression in some ways, but there’s just some things I have to hurt.
