Healthy Food Keeps Children Happy

Here is another reason to eat healthy. Vegetables and fruits can help in keeping youngsters calm, happy and energetic, researchers while revealing the hidden benefits of a healthy diet, say.

For the study, a team of researchers from New Zealand's University of Otago looked at more than 280 young adults, with an average age of 20 years.

All the participants filled an online food diary for 21 days. Every day, the young adults shared the items included in their meals, particularly fruits and vegetables, and their mental status while using nine positive and nine negative adjectives was recorded.

Other information about the youngsters, like age, gender, ethnicity, weight and height was collected through questionnaires. Researchers also kept a track of the unhealthy food items, like potato crisps, cookies/biscuits and cakes/muffins that the participants consumed during the study period.

Proving the power of a healthy diet, researchers found that a diet with more fruits and vegetables brings a more positive outlook on the youngsters, and helps in improving their positive mood the following day.

"On days when people ate more fruits and vegetables, they reported feeling calmer, happier and more energetic than they normally did," Dr. Tamlin Conner, who was involved in the study, said in a news release.

"After further analysis we demonstrated that young people would need to consume approximately seven to eight total servings of fruits and vegetables per day to notice a meaningful positive change. One serving of fruit or vegetables is approximately the size that could fit in your palm, or half a cup. My co-author Bonnie White suggests that this can be done by making half your plate at each meal vegetables and snacking on whole fruit like apples."

The results of the study have been published in the British Journal of Health Psychology.