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RESEARCH PERSPECTIVE
Evolution Of Well-Being And Happiness
After Increase In Produce Consumption
Fby redzo mujcic, phd in economics, and andrew j. oswald, doctor of philosophy
ruits and vegetables are known to Data are collected each year by face-to-face provide important health benefits. Yet, interviews and self-completion questionnaires. in Western society, the typical citizen The first technique is mainly used to gather the
afford it, or divorcing a spouse and becoming less happy and also eating in a less healthy way — but instead intraperson changes that might be influenced by public interventions.
The effect is the equivalent in absolute size to (a negative direction) that of becoming unemployed or approximately half the size of the emotional consequence of marital sepa- ration. Such an effect size is large. An open issue is whether diet might have slow-acting effects on mental well-being. The analyses explore this. The regression equations reveal that produce consumption in the current year is predictive of higher well-being — measured as life satisfaction or as happiness — in the future even after control for current well-being. The first dependent variable is life satisfaction. The second variable is “been a happy person.”
DISCUSSION
These findings are consistent with the idea that eating certain foods is a form of invest- ment in future happiness and well-being. The implications of fruit and vegetable consumption are estimated to be substantial and to operate within the space of 2 years—too quickly to be a reflection of the physical advantages of diet for outcomes such as cardiovascular disease documented by earlier researchers.
In a sense, this article offers a new possibility for future public-policy programs to encourage healthy eating — the possibility that citizens in Western society could be given evidence that happiness gains from healthy eating may occur much more quickly than any long-distant improvement to people’s physical health.
If individuals weigh the likely benefits of fruit and vegetables in their diet, and set that against any perceived costs, both pecuniary and nonpecuniary, of doing so, then scientific evidence of extra psychological gains from a healthy diet might help to persuade people to raise their intake of fruit and vegetables.
Redzo Mujcic (left) is with the Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.
Andrew J. Oswald (right) is with the
Department of Economics and Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy, University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom.
eats an unhealthy diet. The difficulty of per- suading people to consume more fruits and vegetables remains a serious one.
In this study, we uncovered evidence consis- tent with a longitudinal connection between the consumption of certain foods (especially fruits and vegetables) and later subjective well-being, and a channel that appears to be independent of long-run health.
In disciplines beyond public health research, the study of happiness and well-being has focused on the role of economic, personal and political influences. It is perhaps understandable that the role of food in the list of determinants of well-being has so far been given little attention.
We used a panel of 12,389 individuals (ages 15–93) to trace potential linkages running from diet to later-life satisfaction and happiness. The analysis was done by following individuals between 2007 and 2013.
This article documents the longitudinal link- ages between produce consumption and mental well-being; such an approach ensures that any observed relationship is not merely a cross-sec- tional pattern caused by omitted factors such as personality, wealth or family upbringing.
METHODS
Two questions relating to produce consump- tion were available in 2007 and 2009 of the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, a nationally represen- tative panel survey that began in 2001. The corresponding questionnaires asked: “Including tinned, frozen, dried and fresh fruit, on how many days in a usual week do you eat fruit?” and “Including tinned, frozen and fresh vege- tables, on how many days in a usual week do you eat vegetables?” with possible responses ranging from 0 (“do not eat any fruit or vege- tables in a usual week”) to 7 days per week.
For those who responded with some posi- tive frequency to these questions, the following was asked: “On a day when you eat fruit, how many servings of fruit do you usually eat?” and “On a day when you eat vegetables, how many servings of vegetables do you usually eat?”
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demographic and socioeconomic information, and the latter is adopted to measure health and lifestyle choices. The survey respondents were shown flashcards to visually define a serving size or portion. The mean value was 3.84 serv- ings per day, with a standard deviation of 2.01.
The first dependent variable examined was self-reported life satisfaction, derived from the question, “All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life?” Respondents were told to “Pick a number between 0 and 10 to indi- cate how satisfied you are.” Overall, the mean score for the sampled individuals in Australia was 7.91, with a standard deviation of 1.41.
As an additional check, we used a second measure. The respondent was asked, “How much of the times in the past 4 weeks” did he or she experience particular types of feelings or symptoms, including “been a happy person.” The individuals’ responses were coded from 1 (none of the time) to 6 (all of the time), with a mean happiness score of 4.43 out of 6.
RESULTS
A so-called fixed-effect regression equation depicts the (uncorrected) longitudinal relation- ship — the change-on-change relationship — between subjective well-being and nine different levels of produce consumption. The regression analyses provide formal evidence implying that a change from the lowest levels to the highest levels of consumption would, on average, be associated with a rise in life satisfaction of approximately 0.24 life-satisfaction points.
The implied effect size is substantial. At first glance, 0.24 might be thought to indicate that the consequences of fruit and vegetable intake are minor. That interpretation is mistaken; it stems from a blurring of the distinction between interperson variance and intraperson variance.
As in much of the longitudinal public health research, in this study we tried to understand not the (inevitably high) cross-sectional vari- ation in human well-being — for example, someone becoming richer through time and becoming happier and simultaneously eating in a healthier way because they could now