How many people do you know who are on a low-fat, high carbohydrate diet? How many people do you know who are on antidepressants? Could there be a link?

Julia Ross, a clinical psychologist and author of The Mood Cure, sees a connection between the skyrocketing rates of depression and the diet obsession in this country. Statistics show:

• we are 100 times more depressed than we were in 1900;
• fully 50% of Americans over the age of 14 are experiencing "significant debilitating depression and/or anxiety;" and
• in the past two decades antidepressants have become the third largest class of prescription drugs. 

At the same time, Ross says, our diets have deteriorated to the point of "epidemic malnutrition." She notes that in 1965, after the processed food industry had been going strong for about 10 years, the average U.S. woman was deficient in 3 nutrients.  By 1990 that deficiency had risen to 13 nutrients.