Should the FDA Approve the Mediterranean Diet for Depression?

Should the US Food and Drug Administration approve the Mediterranean diet for the treatment of clinical depression? I am Dr Drew Ramsey, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University in New York City. This is the Brain Food blog, for Medscape Psychiatry.

This was a big year for brain food. On January 31, 2017, Felice Jacka and colleagues^[1] published the SMILES study, which showed that the Mediterranean diet had a significant and positive effect for individuals with moderate to severe depression. One year later, Natalie Parletta and colleagues^[2] at the Center for Population Research in South Australia have published a similar study with striking findings. Dr Parletta and her group followed 152 individuals with depression who were randomly assigned to a control group, which participated in a very active support group, or a group that received the Mediterranean diet.

As the authors note, we live in an "obesogenic environment," and therefore changing eating behaviors is quite challenging. To mitigate those challenges, every 2 weeks, the intervention group received a food hamper containing some essential ingredients for a recipe that they would learn, along with staples such as canned tuna or salmon, olive oil, and whole grains and legumes, the basic staples of the Mediterranean diet.