Boost your happiness by eating more vegetables

Feeling stressed, sad or grumpy?

Greater happiness, life satisfaction, and positive affect can be found in your Mother’s advice: eat your veggies

Boost happiness with vegetables and fruit.

There is growing evidence that boosting intake of vegetables and fruit also supports your well-being. Happiness, satisfaction with life, and positive affects are not entirely explained by variables such as socio-economic status, race, education, marriage, exercise, smoking, and body mass index (BMI).

Recent experimental and daily food diary research suggests that consuming fruits and vegetables may be a causal factor in promoting positive well-being.

Eating more vegetables and fruits is correlated with increased happiness.

Researchers in the United Kingdom used surveys to measure psychological well-being and other factors that influence human health, such as food and lifestyle. Authors of the National Bureau of Economic Research analyzed this research.

80,000 people were assessed. The diet surveys evaluated the frequency in which each person ate veggies and fruit.

The psychological surveys assessed things like life satisfaction, mental well-being, mental disorders, self-reported health, happiness, anxiety, and feeling low. The authors tried to control for variables that play a role in how you feel about life, like income, work status, your health, and other potential stressors.

Personal well being reaches a peak at SEVEN servings of fruit and vegetables daily.

The more vegetables you eat, the happier and more satisfied you are with your life.

According to the surveys, seven to eight portions of vegetables was more strongly associated with happiness and overall well-being than having a job.

Maybe that’s because whether or not you’re employed, you still need to eat? Just a thought.

Researchers concluded that personal well-being reaches is highest at seven servings of fruits and vegetables each day.

But those who ate just five servings a day were almost as happy as people who ate higher amounts.

As you may have wondered, it’s not clear whether vegetables make people happy or if happy people are more likely to eat vegetables. Because there are a lot of factors that can influence personal happiness, the authors say their results are “only suggestive” of a link between veggie intake and personal happiness.

Colorful salad
Photo Credit: nadine-primeau@unsplash.com

Positivity, curiosity, creativity are also correlated with a higher intake of fruit and vegetables.

An older study sampled 405 young adults (mostly female, mean age 19.9 years). For 3 weeks, young adults reported on their consumption of fruit, vegetables, sweets, and chips. They also reported their contentedness, well-being, curiosity, creativity, and positive or negative feelings.

Fruit and vegetables consumption predicted greater feelings of well-being, curiosity, positivity and creativity compared with young adults who ate fewer fruit and vegetables. On days when young adults ate more fruit & veggies, they reported greater well-being, positivity, curiosity, and creativity compared with days when they ate less.

Authors of this study share that this study provides the first evidence that fruit & vegetable consumption may influence well-being in early adulthood.

Most people struggle eating just five servings of vegetables per day.

  • What is one serving? This is about 1/2 of a cup of veggies or fruit (or both).
  • How many servings are recommended? The USDA recommends 5 servings per day. But some say that we need between 7-11 servings per day.
  • Remember that 7 cups of veggies and fruits combined seems to be the sweet spot for mental well being, thus far.

Try some of my yummy recipes to help ensure you get more veggies into your life.

Soups:

SaladTry my suggestions for more awesome salads

Main Course:

Side Dish:

Smoothies:

strawberry ginger beet smoothie_opt

Need more help with strategies to get more veggies into your life?

See how we can help with meal planning and individualized consultations here.

What will you do differently as a result of reading this post?

Sharing your specific ideas will help you clarify your next steps. Please let me know by commenting below. Have a great day!

Comments

11 responses to “Boost your happiness by eating more vegetables”

  1. Lilia Lee says:

    Interesting! Wow, I need to up my intake of veggies pronto.
    Thanks for posting articles of such interest to people like me.

  2. Vegetables increase happiness? I’ll take it! I definitely notice feeling better on days where I’ve eaten 7+ servings of fruits and veggies. And your recipe for curried butternut squash soup looks delish!

  3. Kelly says:

    I have to admit… I am definitely happier when I get my veggies in and this past week I have NOT done such a good job!! Traveling with the fam always poses this issue for me so I will definitely be catching up when I get home!!

  4. There is an amazing retreat center near me called Omega – and we’ve taken r&r retreats there as a family – totally vegetarian. Not only did we all notice how nice our skin looked, we noticed how ‘light’ our energy was after a couple days on a total veggie diet! The food was amazing and fresh -and of course having it prepared deliciously for us was so nice! I was REALLY aware of the lighter moods and although not a vegetarian lifestyle — we have since incorporated an almost 100% organic diet as a result.

  5. What a great article! I love this. OF COURSE, eating good, clean healthy food is going to be beneficial to your body – both physically and emotionally. It only makes sense! Not to mention eating all that good stuff means less room for the bad stuff – bad stuff which can cause mood swings and low energy and crankiness. I’m such a fan of eating well, can’t you tell? It really is a keystone to good health.

  6. Sarah Schwab says:

    this is awesome! The best reason I’ve heard for eating my vegetables. I think I’m going to go make myself a green smoothie!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *