Sustainable Diet and Happiness

Diet and happiness are linked in physical, cognitive, and emotional ways. Food is an undeniable necessity for life, and therefore a precursor to the pursuit of happiness. The experience of procuring, preparing, and consuming... [ view full abstract ]

Diet and happiness are linked in physical, cognitive, and emotional ways. Food is an undeniable necessity for life, and therefore a precursor to the pursuit of happiness. The experience of procuring, preparing, and consuming food can be enjoyable, and the nutrition derived from eating is necessary for well-being. In addition, cuisine provides an opportunity to connect with different cultures and our own heritage as well as a social setting with a shared experience to facilitate connection and socialization. Dietary choice is also important for sustainability, with implications for climate change, soil and water health, food security, and animal welfare. For a growing number of people, ethical and environmental concerns motivate the consumption of certain foods with ascribed benefits. Some foods label the desirable qualities of their production with labels such as humane, sustainable, free range, plant-based, organic, fair trade, non-GMO, and natural, suggesting their ethical or environmental superiority over other products. People are therefore able to make choices that reflect their own beliefs, reinforcing their behavior on a daily basis. Despite linkages between diet, happiness, and sustainability, there is a lack of academic literature to provide insight into what role diet plays in happiness, and how that might connect to efforts to improve the sustainability of dietary choices. We seek to provide the groundwork for analysis of how dietary choice provides the key to a happier and more sustainable life. Utilizing a survey based approach and semi-structured interviews, we compare the happiness of respondents following a variety of diets, and analyze to determine if perceived sustainability benefits play a role in self-described measures of happiness and how actual reported dietary habits compare to perceptions. We hypothesize that there is a positive correlation between eudemonic happiness and estimated sustainability of diet. We also hypothesize that restricted diets have a negative correlation with hedonic happiness, but a positive correlation with eudemonic happiness, only if they are restricted on the basis of ethical or religious beliefs. The percent of participants whose responses indicate high eudemonic happiness and high perceived sustainability of diet are compared to the percent of participants whose responses indicate high eudemonic happiness and low perceived sustainability of diet. A similar comparison is made with measures of hedonic happiness for participants with restricted diets, divided into those following restricted diets for ethical or religious beliefs and those following restricted diets for allergy or health concerns. We also discuss correlations between dietary choice, life satisfaction, motivations for diet, life satisfaction, flourishing, environmental sensitivity, and the degree of animal product consumption. Results from this research provide insight into the role of diet and perceived sustainability of diet in eudemonic and hedonic happiness. Finally, we provide recommendations for a pathway to improving overall life satisfaction of consumers while simultaneously reducing environmental impacts from their diet.