This is sort of one of those stories that tells you what you already know, but it’s nice to have it confirmed by science. According to new research, eating fruit and vegetables makes us happier.
Anyone who already eats fruit and other healthy food regularly will already be fully aware of the impact healthy eating can have on our psychological wellbeing. This is especially true for those of us who generally eat well but have the occasional junk food binge and realise just how awful we feel shortly afterwards.
We don’t predominantly feel good because eating healthy food gives us some kind of smug diet superiority complex (although that sometimes does kick in), we generally just have a better mood because, well, if we feel physically crap we feel mentally crap and the same applies in reverse.
But just in case that wasn’t clear, which in fairness it may not be to people who never eat healthily, British and Australian researchers have confirmed it is the case.
Fruit and vegetables could be the key to a happy life in more ways than one. (Credit: Unsplash)
Due to be published shortly in the American Journal of Public Health, the University of Warwick study is actually one of the first of its kind to look at the relationship between healthy eating and psychological wellbeing.
Observation of 12,000 randomly selected people revealed that those who went from eating almost no fruit and vegetables to eating eight portions a day experienced an increase in life satisfaction, over a two-year period, equivalent to moving from unemployment to employment. Interestingly, participants’ happiness levels increased incrementally for each extra daily portion of fruit and vegetables up to eight portions per day.
Factors such as changes in employment status and other personal circumstances over the period were taken into account.
A link with antioxidants?
Professor Andrew Oswald said: “Eating fruit and vegetables apparently boosts our happiness far more quickly than it improves human health. People’s motivation to eat healthy food is weakened by the fact that physical-health benefits, such as protecting against cancer, accrue decades later. However, well-being improvements from increased consumption of fruit and vegetables are closer to immediate.”
Experts from the University of Queensland, Australia collaborated with their British counterparts on the research. Food diaries of 12,385 randomly sampled Australian adults over 2007, 2009, and 2013 were studied, using the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey.
The academics suggest a link could eventually be found between their findings and current research into antioxidants that suggests a connection between optimism and carotenoid in the blood. A great deal of further research is needed in this area, though.
In the meantime, we’ll simplify things by assuming that fruit and vegetables make us healthier and being healthy in turn makes us feel good.
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Image credit: Thinkstock
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