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Eating More Fruits And Vegetables Can Make You Significantly Happier
Trending News: There's An Easy (And Healthy) Way To Feel Happier
Why Is This Important?
Because everyone would like to be happier, and you probably could stand to eat more fruits and vegetables.
Long Story Short
New research indicates that eating more fruit and vegetables can substantially increase people’s happiness levels.
They’re two humanity's great concerns: What you eat, and how you feel.
In particular, a greater focus on fitness is driving a greater focus on eating a decent daily intake of fruit and vegetables. And science is starting to take a closer look at how that’s affecting our mental health.
New research from the University of Warwick in England and the University of Queensland in Australia indicates that eating more fruit and vegetables can substantially increase people’s happiness levels. Soon to be published in the American Journal of Public Health, it’s one of the first scientific studies to explore psychological well-being beyond the traditional findings that fruit and vegetables can reduce the risk of certain diseases.
And while such research perhaps plays into our common vernacular of eating well to feel well, the results are startling. Across 12,000 randomly selected people happiness benefits were detected for each extra daily portion of fruit and vegetables — an effect that scaled right up to eight portions a day. If, for example, you went from almost no fruit and vegetables to eight portions a day, you would experience an increase in life satisfaction equivalent to moving from unemployment to employment.
Indeed, fruit and vegetables boost our happiness far quicker than they actually improve physical wellbeing. “People’s motivation to eat healthy food is weakened by the fact that physical-health benefits, such as protecting against cancer, accrue decades later,” said Professor Andrew Oswald in a press release. Oswald is an author on the paper. “However, well-being improvements from increased consumption of fruit and vegetables are closer to immediate.”
How immediate? Within 24 months. And that was after factoring in many other influences, including changes in income and other life circumstances. The authors of the paper are hoping it translates to a more effective message to encourage people to incorporate fruit and vegetables into their diet, rather than the often distant-seeming physical health benefits. Dr Redzo Mujcic, research fellow at the University of Queensland, said: “Perhaps our results will be more effective than traditional messages in convincing people to have a healthy diet. There is a psychological payoff now from fruit and vegetables — not just a lower health risk decades later.”
Own The Conversation
Ask The Big Question
Why has it taken us this long to confirm such definitive results on fruit and vegetable intake?
Disrupt Your Feed
How on earth do you eat eight servings of fruit and vegetables a day?
Drop This Fact
After a brief rise through 2009, per capita fruit and vegetable consumption in the United States declined seven percent over the five years to 2014.