There's a new happiness booster out there, and it doesn't have to do with exercise or meditation.
It's (drumroll) vanilla yogurt.
According to a new study published in the journal Food Research International, eating vanilla yogurt makes people feel happy.
Researchers tested this by giving three groups of 24 study participants two types of yogurt marketed identically; the only differences were flavor and fat content.
Participants were then asked to rate photos of other people based on six negative and six positive personality traits, and researchers used their responses to measure participants' happiness levels.
While eating fruity yogurts had no impact on happiness for participants, eating low-fat yogurts elicited positive emotional responses, and eating vanilla yogurts made the participants really happy.
More research needs to be conducted on the vanilla yogurt phenomenon (especially because researchers ran into some technical difficulties during the experiment), but this isn't the first time yogurt consumption was associated with happiness.
Yogurt is packed with probiotics, shown to promote gut-bacteria health and have a positive impact on mood.
Well, I know what I'm eating for my afternoon snack.
Citations: Vanilla Yogurt Makes Us Happier; Measuring Consumers' Responses To Food Products Without Bias (Medical Daily)
