The Contribution of Food Consumption to Well-Being

Abstract

The newly emerging field of positive psychology focuses on the positive facets of life, including happiness, life satisfaction, personal strengths, and flourishing. Research in this field has empirically identified many important benefits of enhanced well-being, including improvements in blood pressure, immune competence, longevity, career success, and satisfaction with personal relationships. Recognizing these benefits has motivated researchers to identify the correlates and causes of well-being to inform them in the development and testing of strategies and interventions to elevate well-being. As positive psychology researchers throughout the world have turned their attention toward facets of food intake, a consensus is developing that the consumption of healthy foods can enhance well-being in a dose-response fashion. The link between unhealthy foods and well-being is less clear. Some studies suggest that under certain conditions, fast food may increase happiness, though other studies demonstrate that fast food can indirectly undermine happiness. The positive impact of food consumption on well-being is not limited to what people consume but extends to how they consume it and social factors related to eating. Though the research suggests that our food intake, particularly fruits and vegetables, increases our well-being, this research is in its infancy. Research specifically focused on subpopulations, including infants and pregnant mothers, is mostly lacking, and the mechanisms that underlie the relationship between food consumption and well-being remain to be elucidated.

Community Supported Agriculture as a Driver of Food-Related Well-Being

“…Beyond a relation to healthy nutrition, the effect of food on well-being has been a growing topic of research interest [39]. This paper examined food-related well-being in CSAs and explored the extent to which participants' experiences and outcomes relate to it.…”

“…In recent years, a specific concept of well-being, food-related well-being, has generated an abundance of literature. In this way, food-related well-being explicitly incorporates subjective aspects of well-being, and thus also physical, psychological, or socio-environmental aspects [8,9,39]. In this section, we present these aspects by outlining their relationship to the well-being dimensions of BPSS (main findings are summarized in Table 1).…”

Well-Being and Cooking Behavior: Using the Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment (PERMA) Model as a Theoretical Framework

“…Similar to other food-related behaviors, such as eating and gardening (Soga et al, 2016;Holder, 2019), opportunities for engagement during the cooking process are multiple. Regarding cooking skills, there is promotion of a mixed-use of abilities that include motor coordination, thinking, flexibility and implementing strategies -all abilities that may translate into characteristics that are related to psychosocial health.…”

Las capacidades financieras como determinantes de la alfabetización alimentaria entre estudiantes universitarios

“…Además de la cantidad y calidad de los alimentos que se consumen, la manera y las condiciones en las que se realiza el proceso alimenticio también influyen en el estado de ánimo y el bienestar de las personas (Bublitz, Hansen, Peracchio y Tussler, 2019;Holder, 2019). Una alfabetización alimentaria deficiente puede perjudicar la capacidad para elegir opciones de alimentación nutritiva de manera consciente (Palumbo et al, 2019).…”

“…De manera independiente a la formación académica y profesional, diferentes estudios han reconocido que la búsqueda del bienestar general es multidimensional y que considera diferentes aspectos de la vida que incluyen desde la salud hasta la satisfacción financiera (Stiglitz, Sen y Fitoussi, 2009;Van Praag, Frijters y Ferrer-i-Carbonell, 2003). Así como el ingreso no es el único determinante de la felicidad (Gatina, 2016;Oswald, 1997;Van Praag et al, 2003), tampoco el bienestar alimentario se limita solo a la ingesta de alimentos, sino que se amplía a la forma de prepararlos y al contexto en el que se consumen (Holder, 2019;Slater, Falkenberg, Rutherford y Colatruglio, 2018).…”