Stress, Anxiety and Depression Linked to Lower Dairy Intake in Large Turkish Study

When psychological distress climbs, the shopping cart apparently changes. A large cross-sectional study of 4,008 healthy Turkish adults, published in BMC Psychology, has found that people experiencing higher levels of stress, anxiety, and depression are significantly less likely to meet the recommended daily intake of dairy products. The findings, drawn from a detailed nutritional and psychological survey conducted by researchers at Istanbul Medipol University, add a surprising dimension to the ongoing scientific debate about how diet and mental health shape one another.

The research team set out to answer a question that has remained poorly understood despite growing interest in the multifaceted role of dairy in human health: does dairy consumption track simultaneously with mental well-being and sleep quality? To find out, they recruited 4,008 adults with a mean age of 37.9 years, roughly 52 percent of them female. Participants provided demographic information, general health data, and anthropometric measurements, allowing the investigators to build a comprehensive picture of each person’s nutritional and physical status.

Dairy intake was assessed using a semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire, a standard epidemiological tool that asks participants how often they consume specific foods and in what typical portions. From these responses, the researchers calculated each participant’s daily dairy consumption and compared it against recommended intake levels. Sleep quality was measured with the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, or PSQI, a widely validated instrument that evaluates sleep across multiple domains including duration, disturbances, latency, and daytime dysfunction. Psychological status was captured with the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale-21, known as DASS-21, which quantifies the severity of each of the three emotional states on separate subscales.

The results revealed a striking pattern in the population. More than half of the participants, 2,188 people or 54.6 percent, had poor sleep quality according to PSQI criteria. But when the researchers examined how dairy consumption related to psychological distress, a clear gradient emerged. Using multinomial logistic regression models adjusted for age, gender, and PSQI score, they found that increasing severity of stress, anxiety, and depression was associated with a lower likelihood of meeting the recommended dairy products intake.

The numbers behind that gradient are telling. Participants with moderate stress had 39 percent lower odds of adequate dairy consumption compared with those experiencing less distress, with an odds ratio of 0.61 and a 95 percent confidence interval of 0.48 to 0.79, a result the authors reported as highly significant at p less than 0.001. Extremely severe anxiety carried an even stronger signal: an odds ratio of 0.51, meaning those individuals had roughly half the odds of meeting dairy recommendations, with a confidence interval of 0.38 to 0.69 and p less than 0.001. Moderate depression was also linked to reduced odds, at 0.75 with a confidence interval of 0.60 to 0.95 and a p value of 0.017.

Sleep quality, by contrast, told a different story. Despite the high prevalence of poor sleepers in the sample, the analysis found no significant association between dairy consumption and sleep quality, with a p value of 0.252. This null result is notable because dairy products contain nutrients, including tryptophan and melatonin precursors, that have been hypothesized to support sleep, and popular health advice often promotes warm milk as a sleep aid. In this large adult sample, at least, the statistical link between how much dairy people consumed and how well they slept did not hold up after the researchers accounted for other factors.

The authors are careful about what these associations can and cannot mean. Because the study is cross-sectional, capturing a single moment in time rather than following participants over years, the findings indicate associations rather than causal relationships. The direction of the arrow remains genuinely open. It is possible that psychological distress changes eating behavior, leading distressed individuals to consume fewer dairy products, perhaps through appetite changes, altered food choices, or the general disruption of routine that accompanies anxiety and depression. It is equally possible that inadequate dairy intake contributes to nutritional deficits that worsen emotional states, or that some third factor, such as metabolic or personal circumstances, drives both the diet and the distress.

That ambiguity is precisely why the research team calls for prospective studies to clarify directionality. In the meantime, they argue that both dairy consumption quantities and personal, psychological, and metabolic factors should be considered together when evaluating an individual’s nutritional status. The message for clinicians and dietitians is that mental health screening and dietary assessment may belong in the same conversation: a patient reporting moderate stress or severe anxiety may also be falling short of dairy recommendations, and that shortfall could matter for overall health even if the psychological consequences remain unproven.

The study’s scale lends weight to its conclusions. With 4,008 participants and validated instruments for both diet and psychological status, the analysis had substantial statistical power to detect the associations it reported, and the adjustment for age, gender, and sleep quality strengthens confidence that the distress-dairy link is not simply an artifact of demographic differences. Still, cross-sectional nutrition studies face inherent limitations, including reliance on self-reported food frequency data, which can be influenced by recall bias and by the very emotional states under investigation. Distressed individuals may also report their diets differently, a possibility the authors acknowledge implicitly by urging caution.

For now, the study stands as one of the largest single-country examinations of dairy consumption and psychological distress, and its central finding is hard to ignore: the more severe the stress, anxiety, or depression, the lower the odds of meeting dairy recommendations, while sleep quality remained statistically disconnected from dairy intake. Whether the glass of milk is a casualty of distress, a missing piece of the mental health puzzle, or merely a fellow traveler of some deeper metabolic factor will require the longitudinal research the authors say is needed. Until then, the study offers a data-driven reminder that what people eat and how they feel are entangled in ways that science is only beginning to untangle.

Subject of Research: Health

Article Title: Dairy consumption in relation to psychological distress and sleep quality: findings from a large cross-sectional study in Turkish adults

Article References: Keskin, E., Özyürek-Arpa, F., Saleki, N., Alpat-Yavaş, İ., Pehlivan, M., Güney-Coşkun, M., Sezer-Karataş, F. E., Kocabaş, B. N., Gündüz-Kıl, N., Ömür, S., Kubilay, M. N., Kalkan, I., & Ersoy, G. (2026). Dairy consumption in relation to psychological distress and sleep quality: findings from a large cross-sectional study in Turkish adults. BMC Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-026-05739-0

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s40359-026-05739-0

Keywords: dairy consumption, psychological distress, sleep quality, stress, anxiety, depression, nutrition, mental health, cross-sectional study, Turkish adults, Dairy, consumption