The Ultimate Happiness Diet
7 min read
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A great deal has been written lately about ways of eating that increase longevity and improve health. Debates rage around the virtues and drawbacks of certain restrictive and regional diets, including such varieties as old-school omnivore, lacto-ovo flexitarian, Mediterranean, and Okinawan. These discussions are interesting and important, but usually leave out one important question: What diet makes us happiest?
The answer, of course, is much more subjective and individual than figuring out which diet is best for your blood-cholesterol levels. No matter what the population data said about the nutritional value of organ meats, for example, I would never be happy eating such stuff. What makes us happy isn’t all subjective, though, and this column is devoted to bringing objective social science to bear on how to improve your well-being. As it happens, plenty of good research has been done on our food and eating habits that can help us become happier, one meal at a time.
As a rule, eating is an inherently pleasurable activity: Our brains have evolved to find feeding ourselves—which, on its face, should be a boring, repetitive task we must do to stay alive—rewarding. Many parts of the brain’s pleasure system are involved when we eat, including the orbitofrontal cortex, the cingulate cortex, the ventral tegmental area, the hypothalamus, the periventricular gray and periaqueductal gray, the nucleus accumbens, the ventral pallidum, the amygdala, and the insular cortices. But for the stimulation of this whole system to transcend mere pleasure and become a source of happiness, we need to experience enjoyment—and that generally means adding the elements of sociality and memory. Research from Asia shows that happiness rises when people eat together in group settings, and pleasure is enhanced when memories of past meals are savored. So, to be happier, make eating a social, memorable experience as often as possible.
Emotions also affect eating—and not always positively. For example, one 2012 study found that young women with depressive symptoms were 130 percent more likely than nondepressed women to binge eat. But the relationship between eating and emotions is generally benign. A 2013 study in the journal Appetite showed that among what it called “emotional eaters,” meaning people who eat in response to strong emotions of any kind, a positive mood stimulated significantly more eating than a negative mood. We celebrate our birthdays with cake, after all.
Thanks to such research, we can devise an eating strategy based on the patterns and diets that yield the highest levels of happiness. To begin with, studies show that people are happier when they eat moderately often. One 2016 survey of students in Iran found that the happiest were those who ate breakfast every day and had a daily total of three meals, plus one or two snacks in between. We need to bear in mind that this does not suggest that all-day grazing is a good strategy; rather, it supports the idea of maintaining a regular meal schedule while allowing a couple of mindful, scheduled nibbles along the way.
In 2021, the Dutch happiness researcher Ruut Veenhoven published a meta-analysis of studies on menus that offer the highest life satisfaction. His findings showed that happiness increases when people eat a varied diet, moderate in fat and oils, fairly low in salt and sugar, and above all rich in fruit and vegetables. More recent research also finds that proteins and fats tend to be associated with lower anxiety and depression, and that high carbohydrate consumption is more associated with mood problems and elevated stress.
The latest data on alcohol consumption are less supportive than they once were of the idea that moderate drinking could be part of a healthy diet. A huge, systematic review of modern research on alcohol and health concludes that low and moderate drinking is not beneficial for health, as was formerly believed. Further, drinking for its inebriating effects is associated with a “low hedonic capacity,” a natural inability to feel good. This typically leads to long-term problems, given the risks to mental and physical health from almost any alcohol consumption beyond low levels.
What about junk food and desserts, to which people so often turn for a brighter mood? Here, too, the data are not encouraging. Consuming highly processed and fast food is associated with greater odds of psychological distress, particularly in children and adolescents. Eating candy has immediate mood benefits, but these last only a few minutes, and the downside is that the refined sugar typically found in sweets is addictive; withdrawal can cause clinical anxiety. In addition, diets high in saturated fat and refined sugar are associated with memory impairment.
Although a diet rich in plant stuffs has been very clearly established as important for health, far less research exists on such a diet’s happiness effects, especially those of an all-plant regimen. Vegetarianism has been found to raise a sense of tranquility, but to lower enjoyment. Some scholarship has suggested that a low-fat, fully vegan diet can help ease depression and anxiety.
All around the world, an overconsumption of foods that lead to obesity is associated with lower levels of well-being—though we don’t know enough about the happiness effects of weight-loss diets. Crash diets that stimulate the body’s starvation response are clearly bad, and scholars long ago found that such harsh regimens can even bring on psychotic symptoms. The evidence that exists on less severe caloric restriction appears mildly positive for well-being: Although intermittent fasting has no evident impact on anxiety or mood, the practice does seem to reduce people’s depression scores. As for the newly popular weight-loss drugs, such as Ozempic, their long-term effects on happiness have yet to be demonstrated, but studies on diabetic patients who use these medications tend to show anxiety and depression falling.
Obviously, the relations between food and well-being pose far more questions to which we’d like to know the answers, including how much we can benefit from dietary supplements. But based on the research we do have, I can suggest a few basic rules for happy eating to start with.
For most people, the best happiness diet is one balanced across a variety of foods and emphasizing proteins and fats over carbohydrates. Such a diet avoids junk food and refined sweets. Alcohol consumption should be moderate at most, and recreational drinking is a no-no. Avoiding obesity is important for happiness, but not to the extent of going on a crash weight-loss program in a way that mimics starvation. Your eating should be organized primarily around regular, formal meal times, rather than eating on the run or foraging all day long. Meals are best taken in the company of others.
This, to me, all sounds very Spanish. Over the past 35 years, I have spent a great deal of time in Spain: I married into a Catalan family, and have lived in Spain for long periods. As with virtually everywhere else today, a good many people eat poorly in Spain, especially among the young, sadly. Still, the typical Spanish diet remains a sound model, consisting of a varied, balanced menu that’s rich in proteins and olive oil, and moderate in carbohydrates and alcohol (which is generally served only with meals). And starvation diets are unheard-of in Spain.
The standard meals are breakfast; small midmorning snack; midday meal around 2:30 p.m.; a light snack around 6 p.m., known as merienda; and a late supper. To be sure, in what they eat, Spaniards are very similar in their habits to other peoples around the Mediterranean. But I am always struck by how they eat. Spanish people rarely eat alone; meals are emphatically social occasions, which is why they take a long time. As the research shows, that is a good recipe for happiness.
I should mention one other characteristic of the Spanish way of eating, which helps explain one strange pattern in the research. Scholars have found that the more we crave and think about food, the less happiness it brings us. For example, researchers in 2020 showed that people high in “foodiness” (that is, people with stated interest in good eating) tended to overestimate the satisfaction they’d get from meals—and, we can only presume, to be chronically disappointed.
In Spain, people certainly like their food, but they don’t typically focus on it much—let alone express cravings for food. My Spanish wife thinks the obsessions of what we Americans might call a food culture are quite eccentric, like collecting antique yo-yos or something. “It’s justfood,” she says. “The point is to eat together.”
That makes sense to me. And when I am in Spain, I always wind up in a brighter mood after a few days in the routine. My worries diminish, my problems seem more manageable, and, well, I’m happier. Now I know why.
The food isn’t the point at all. It’s about the love.
