Can We Predict Depression from User’s Food Habit?

Food has a direct association with our physical and mental health. Several studies largely claim that psychological and environmental factors are responsible for the poor mental health of an individual. However, food is another driving force for regulating an individual’s mental health. When we experience poor mental health, our food habits might be investigated to determine whether any relationship exists with it. In this study, we find a strong correlation between food habits and mental health (i.e., depressive behavior). To this end, we collected data from different professional groups with varying ages through survey questionnaires. After collecting all the data, Chi-square and p values were calculated from the collected data between users’ food habit and their depressive behavior. Based on these p values, we select a few depressive behavioral conditions linked with food habits (i.e., eat-out, mood enhancer, etc.). Based on these strongly correlated attributes, we predict users’ depressive conditions using different classifiers. Our best classifier (i.e., Random forest) shows substantial performance with an accuracy of 69.76.