Reacción a "A small pilot study examines the reduction in the consumption of ultra-processed foods among patients with depression"

The main limitations of the study are:

• Exploratory nature: the improvement in depressive and anxiety symptoms was not the primary objective of the study.
• Unknown mechanism: the improvement cannot be linked to a reduced intake of any particular type of ultra-processed food.
• Subjective measurement of consumption: the intake of ultra-processed foods was assessed via self-report, without the use of objective measures.

Furthermore, this was a small (20 participants) and open-label pilot study; consequently, the results should be regarded as preliminary and should serve to generate new hypotheses. Therefore, intervention studies with a larger number of participants and objective measures of ultra-processed food consumption are needed, which should also investigate the mechanisms involved.