Fruit and vegetables are the key to happiness

**Eating fruit and vegetables could be the key to happiness, according to new Warwick research.**

A study into food and psychological well-being examined the behaviour of 80,000 participants in Britain and found a link between a high intake of fruit and vegetables and happiness.

The results show that the ideal amount of servings each day is seven, two portions more than the current government-recommended number of ‘five a day’.

The survey defined one portion of fruit or vegetables as 80 grams.

Currently, only one in ten Britons manages to eat seven daily servings whilst a quarter of British people eat no fruit or vegetables on a daily basis.

Economics Professor, Andrew Oswald and Professor Sarah Stewart-Brown, of the Warwick Medical School, conducted the research over a year-long period in conjunction with the American university Dartmouth.

The results of the survey came as a surprise to its authors, who described the “shocking pattern” between fruit and vegetables and well-being as “unanticipated”.

Whilst the reasons behind the results are still relatively unknown, Professor Oswald told the _Boar_ that the study’s findings prove that “fruit and vegetables are worth taking seriously” although he also added that he would like to “get to the bottom of real causality”.

Until now, there has been a limited amount of research into food as a factor in wellbeing.

Professor Oswald commented that though there has been a “huge amount of research understanding human happiness, social scientists have thought amazingly little on types of food”.

He stated that the study’s outcome stressed the importance of healthy eating and suggested that there is now “an additional reason to have healthy foods available on campuses like Warwick”.

Peter Dunn, a spokesman for the University commented on the global significance of these results: “We are delighted that this research, which brings together two Warwick Departments and a Warwick research Centre, has attracted such world-wide and continuing media coverage.”