Fruit and vegetables: The seven wonders of your wellness
Having plenty of fruits and vegetables in your diet not only improves your physical wellness, but a new study has shown that it also seems to boost life satisfaction, mental well-being, and happiness.
From an analysis the diet habits of 80,000 men and women in Britain, researchers found that happiness levels rose correspondingly with fruit and vegetable consumption, and those who ate seven servings daily were happiest. The team evaluated the Welsh Health Survey of 2007-10, the Scottish Health Survey of 2008-09, and the Health Survey of England in 2008, and asked the randomly sampled 80,000 men and women questions about their daily intake of fruits and vegetables, as well as their on exercise habits, employment, and whether they smoked. The participants also reported on their levels of life satisfaction, mental well-being, any mental disorders, happiness, nervousness, and feeling low.
Researcher Sarah Stewart-Brown, MD, professor of public health at Warwick Medical School in the UK was not surprised at the results, and said ‘I think it’s splendid to know that fruits and vegetables are likely to be good for your mental health as well as your physical health’. It’s common knowledge that vegetables and fruits lower weight, blood pressure, heart disease and cancer, to name a few, but less attention has been given to psychological wellbeing.
The study defined a portion as about 3 ounces and didn’t distinguish between types of fruits and vegetables. A small apple, by way of comparison, is 5 ounces, and Andrew Oswald, PhD, professor of economics at the University of Warwick and a study researcher claims ‘the more you go from zero to seven or eight, the happier you will be’. People who eat 7 portions equate to roughly 10% of the population.
However, Stewart-Brown admits that the study does not prove a cause-and-effect relationship, and the link could equally go in the other direction, meaning happy people happen to eat more fruit and vegetables, not vice versa. They also do not know how the nutrient-rich foods help aid happiness, but that isn’t going to deter Oswald from adding more of them to his diet as he says: ‘I am keen to stay cheery’.
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