{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,14]],"date-time":"2026-09-14T10:07:27Z","timestamp":1789380447428,"version":"build-2803163510"},"reference-count":27,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"18","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,14]],"date-time":"2026-09-14T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1789344000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Nutrients"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Background\/Objectives: Evidence linking plant-based diets with mental health is mixed. One reason may be that dietary labels do not always reflect habitual food intake and often coincide with other lifestyle characteristics. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional secondary analysis of 158 Polish adults: 105 omnivores and 53 participants who identified as following plant-based diets (34 vegetarians and 19 vegans). Habitual intake frequencies for 33 food groups and diet-quality indices were derived from KomPAN. Anxiety and depressive symptoms were assessed with HADS-M, empathy with the EQ-Short\/SSIE, and physical activity with IPAQ. Self-identified dietary pattern was the primary exposure; meat\/fish-abstention definitions were examined in sensitivity analyses. Results: Compared with omnivores, plant-based participants had lower BMI and nHDI scores, higher DQI values, and, among those with valid IPAQ data, higher physical activity. Nineteen of 33 food groups differed after false-discovery-rate correction. We found no statistically significant association between dietary identity and HADS-A or HADS-D in crude, minimally adjusted, or broader sensitivity models; the confidence intervals, however, were too wide to establish equivalence or rule out an association. Of the 53 self-identified plant-based participants, 36 (67.9%) met the meat\/fish-abstention criterion and 17 (32.1%) did not. IPAQ analyses included 120 participants, and inverse-probability-weighted sensitivity analyses produced similar HADS estimates. No individual food-frequency variable was associated with HADS-A or HADS-D after multiplicity correction. In exploratory analyses, more frequent vegetable consumption was positively associated with empathy. Conclusions: Dietary identity corresponded to clear differences in habitual food consumption, diet quality, and selected lifestyle characteristics, but we did not detect a statistically significant association with anxiety or depressive symptoms. The observed mismatch between dietary identity and reported behavior highlights the value of measuring both in studies of plant-based diets and psychological outcomes.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/nu18182997","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,14]],"date-time":"2026-09-14T09:34:01Z","timestamp":1789378441000},"page":"2997","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Beyond Dietary Identity: Habitual Food Consumption, Lifestyle Characteristics, and Mental Health in Adults Following Plant-Based Diets"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"18","author":[{"given":"Tamara","family":"Ku\u015bwik","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Human Sciences, VIZJA University, Okopowa 59, 01-043 Warsaw, Poland"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"},{"role":"conceptualization","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"investigation","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"data-curation","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"writing-review-editing","vocabulary":"credit"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-0838-9754","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Konrad","family":"Janowski","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Human Sciences, VIZJA University, Okopowa 59, 01-043 Warsaw, Poland"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"},{"role":"conceptualization","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"methodology","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"writing-review-editing","vocabulary":"credit"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7879-300X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Agnieszka","family":"Bia\u0142ek","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Collegium Medicum, VIZJA University, Okopowa 59, 01-043 Warsaw, Poland"},{"name":"The Kielanowski Institute of Animal Physiology and Nutrition, Polish Academy of Sciences, Instytucka 3, 05-110 Jab\u0142onna, Poland"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"},{"role":"conceptualization","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"methodology","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"formal-analysis","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"writing-original-draft","vocabulary":"credit"},{"role":"supervision","vocabulary":"credit"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,14]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1109","DOI":"10.1007\/s00394-023-03086-z","article-title":"Plant-based and vegetarian diets: An overview and definition of these dietary patterns","volume":"62","author":"Hargreaves","year":"2023","journal-title":"Eur. 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