The Diet Protocols for Happiness

We obsess over diets, fasting, and weight-loss drugs in the name of health. But we rarely ask a more important question: what kind of eating actually makes us happier? In this episode of Office Hours, I explore what the science say about the relationship between food and well-being. Eating gives us pleasure, but meals bring deeper enjoyment when they also combine people and memories. I explore what that means in practice along with seven other practical rules for “happy eating.” In the end, happiness at the table depends less on the food than the company. As my Spanish wife likes to say: the point of eating is not the food—it’s the love. — Brought to you by: • David Protein https://davidprotein.com/arthur⁠⁠—The most effective portable protein on the planet ⁠⁠https://davidprotein.com/arthur⁠ https://davidprotein.com/arthur • ⁠⁠Noble Mobile⁠⁠ https://noblemobile.com/arthurbrooks—With Noble, there is only one plan: The No-Bull Plan. It’s simple. It’s transparent. And if you use less data, you get cash back. Get an exclusive offer at: ⁠⁠https://noblemobile.com/arthurbrooks⁠⁠ https://noblemobile.com/arthurbrooks — Where to find Arthur Brooks: • Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://arthurbrooks.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://arthurbrooks.com/ • In-person Retreats: ⁠⁠https://retreats.arthurbrooks.com/⁠⁠ https://retreats.arthurbrooks.com/ • Newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.arthurbrooks.com/newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.arthurbrooks.com/newsletter • X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/arthurbrooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://x.com/arthurbrooks • Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/arthurcbrooks/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/arthurcbrooks/ • Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/ArthurBrooks/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.facebook.com/ArthurBrooks/ • YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGuyFRjJQFGCKzfHTBvWM6A⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGuyFRjJQFGCKzfHTBvWM6A • LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthur-c-brooks/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthur-c-brooks/ • Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ mailto:[email protected] — Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (09:55) Why eating is pleasurable—and why pleasure alone does not create happiness (13:56) Two ways to turn pleasure into enjoyment (17:12) How both positive and negative emotions influence eating (18:43) Why eating moderately often is linked to greater happiness (22:14) Dietary patterns associated with greater happiness (25:19) What the research shows about alcohol and well-being (28:16) Junk food’s impact on mood and well-being (30:08) The pros and cons of a vegetarian diet (32:19) Why crash diets are bad for your well-being and happiness (35:59) Time-restricted eating and GLP-1 drugs (37:13) #1: Balance across a variety of foods (37:46) #2: Emphasize proteins and fats (37:58) #3: Avoid junk food and refined sweets (38:11) #4: Moderate alcohol consumption (38:24) #5: No recreational drinking (38:34) #6: Avoid obesity without starving yourself (38:49) #7: Organized, regular, formal meal times (39:00) #8: Meals in the company of others (40:19) Q&A: The neuroscience behind how books affect our brains (42:53) Q&A: Leisure vs. Sabbath — Referenced: • The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness:http://themeaningofyourlife.com/themeaningofyourlife.com http://themeaningofyourlife.com • Meaning Membership:https://hub.arthurbrooks.com/the-meaning-membership • Arthur’s newsletter:https://www.arthurbrooks.com/newsletter • The Happiness Scale:https://learn.arthurbrooks.com/the-happiness-scale • The Pursuit of Happiness with Arthur Brooks:https://www.thefp.com/s/the-pursuit-of-happiness-with-arthur • The pleasure of food: underlying brain mechanisms of eating and other pleasures: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13411-014-0029-2 • Health, Happiness and Eating Together: What Can a Large Thai Cohort Study Tell Us?: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4802060 • ... References continued at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.arthurbrooks.com/office-hours⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.arthurbrooks.com/office-hours — Production and marketing by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://penname.co/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://penname.co/⁠.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:30Arthur Brooks?

  Today, I want to talk about something that could be kind of a lighthearted topic, but actually is pretty deadly serious, and that's eating. How can we eat in such a way that we get happier? There are many things that we do. We sleep every day. We talk every day. But one of the things that's most important, obviously, to our health and wellbeing, to our flourishing, is what we put into our bodies. And it turns out it matters a lot. The longer you live with greater health, the more you're able to appreciate a lot of happiness and a lot of love in your life. But the truth of the matter is that when you're living in such a way that you have more love and happiness, you want to live longer. Emotions are related to eating, and it's sort of paradoxical because people will eat a lot and eat in an unhealthy way, both because of negative and positive emotions.

• 1:15Arthur Brooks?

  So now the main point. Which patterns of eating and diets lead to the highest levels of happiness?

• 1:30Arthur Brooks?

  Hey, friends. Welcome to Office Hours. I'm Arthur Brooks. This is a show about love and happiness, about enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning, how you can have more of all these things in your life, and just as importantly, perhaps more importantly, how you can bring these things to other people. I talk about the latest in research and science so that you have this information in a form that you can actually use and that you can talk about. And the reason I do this is because to become a happier person, to have higher wellbeing, it requires that you understand what we're talking about. This is not just a feeling that you'll hope you have. It's really based on knowledge. And then to change your habits, to live in a different way, but just as importantly, to explain it to other people. One of the greatest findings in my field is that if you want to be responsible for

• 2:12Arthur Brooks?

  something, if you want something to affect your life, go teach it to others. The secret to becoming a happier person is becoming a happiness teacher. So this is a happiness teacher school. I hope you're enjoying it. I hope you continue with the show. If this is your first time, welcome. If this is your 40th episode... Welcome back. So delighted to have you with me and I appreciate it very much. Please do continue to recommend this to your friends, to share it with other people. This information, the more that we share it, the better off the world gets and better off we all get as well. I'm always interested in what you have to say, so please do feedback by sending an email to [email protected], the email address that's noted here. Don't forget to leave a review on Spotify or Apple and do hit the like and subscribe button.

• 2:56Arthur Brooks?

  That helps us an awful lot. For more information about what's going on here and information, not just on the show, but about what I'm writing and thinking about, you can subscribe to my column on happiness at the Free Press. Please do go to my website and get the newsletter completely free, new information every week. Sometimes it releases to the show and sometimes it doesn't, but I promise you that it'll start off your day on Friday, heading into the weekend in a way that you will like. That's arthurworks.com/newsletter. You'll start getting that for free this week. You can also send it to friends. If you would like to see me in person, I'm actually taking signups now for the Modern Elder Academy in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We're doing a retreat, a series of retreats as a matter of fact, based on the work that I do.

• 3:38Arthur Brooks?

  And some of them will actually feature me and one coming up on, that's going to be talking to couples will be me and my wife Esther. We'll be together in Santa Fe and maybe with you. We should be great. In the meantime, please do pick up a copy of the book here, The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness. Thanks to you, it's been a New York Times bestseller for a number of weeks. It opened at number one, which is really gratifying, meaning that we're hitting a lot of people in a way that they're finding beneficial. So please do continue to share that book if it's been useful to you and if it's bringing a little bit of meaning or the way to find meaning of your life for you. That's why I wrote it. Hey friends, a lot of you know that I keep a very high protein diet. That's important for me in my 60s because I want to maintain a good level of muscle protein synthesis.

• 4:23Arthur Brooks?

  And I don't always have time to eat as much protein as I want from whole foods. That's the ideal, but it's just not manageable all the time. For that reason, I'm always looking for supplements that can actually get me where I need to go with respect to my macronutrient profile. A bunch of my friends were telling me that David Protein is a really good source. The reason is because protein bars in general, they're handy, they're convenient, but they can be very high in calories and they can actually be really high in carbohydrate, especially in the form of sugar. David Protein, I heard, was better. Sure enough, it's got a great profile. It has 40% more protein, 57% fewer calories than most of the protein bars you find out there. 28 grams of protein, 150 calories, 0 grams of sugar. That's actually quite a feat to put that together.

• 5:08Arthur Brooks?

  And by the way, they taste great. David Protein has a new bronze line with 20 grams of protein, 150 calories, and 0 grams of sugar. That comes to 53% calories from protein, another industry-leading protein-to-calorie ratio, as most leading protein bars on the market average 40% or lower. Each bronze bar features a smooth, decadent marshmallow base with a flavor-filled layering, airy crisp, and a chocolate-flavored coating, providing a different taste and texture profile compared to our Hero Gold line. I started buying David Protein bars, and now I'm pleased that they're sponsoring this show as well. So whether you're on the go or hitting the gym, if you're trying to meet your protein targets, David Protein is a good way for you to do it.

• 5:51Arthur Brooks?

  That's why I'm doing it, and it's what I'm carrying when I'm on the road. So head over to davidprotein.com/Arthur. They've got a special offer for you. If you buy four cartons, they'll give you the fifth carton for free. You're gonna love that. And you can also find David Protein in stores by looking for the store locator. So enjoy.

• 6:10Arthur Brooks?

  You're not broken. You're meaning-starved. I talk to people all the time who are, by any external measure, successful. They've built careers, they have families, they've checked the boxes, and yet, something feels off. Life feels thin, like you're going through the motions, like you're watching yourself from the outside. And here's what I want you to know. That feeling is not a personal failing. It's not ingratitude. It's not something wrong with you. It's a meaning problem and it's an epidemic. The modern world is extraordinary at giving us comfort, achievement and distraction. It's terrible at giving us meaning and no amount of success will fix that.

• 6:53Arthur Brooks?

  I've seen it in my research and I've seen it in my own life. That's exactly what we work on at M E A, the Modern Elder Academy, in a program I've developed called The Meaning of Your Life. It's not a lecture, it's not a quick fix. It's several days of real work in a small group on the questions that actually matter. If what I'm describing sounds familiar, I hope you'll come take a look.

• 7:21Arthur Brooks?

  Today I want to talk about something that could be kind of a lighthearted topic, but actually is pretty deadly serious, and that's eating. How can we eat in such a way that we get happier? A lot of people think they just, they know, which is just give me all the stuff that I like and I'll gobble it up and then I'll be happier. Obviously, it's not that simple. I want to talk to you about what the latest research suggests about different ways of eating, different times of eating, different kinds of diets and how they'll affect your well-being. And the reason is because I know that you're dedicated, if you're watching this show, to the scientific basis of all the things that we do that affect our well-being. This is not just, I hope I feel better, it's I want to design my life in a different way. One of the things that we all do every day, there are many things that we do. We sleep every day, we talk every day.

• 8:06Arthur Brooks?

  But one of the things that's most important, obviously, to our health and well-being, to our flourishing, is what we put into our bodies. And, and it turns out it matters a lot, what you eat, to getting happier, not just healthier. Most of the treatments of this topic deal with longevity and health. This is a different angle than all that. Now, they're related, of course, because the longer you live with greater health, the more you're able to, to appreciate a lot of happiness and a lot of love in your life. But the truth of the matter is that when you're living in such a way that you have more love and happiness, you want to live longer and you care about your health a little bit more. It all kind of rebounds together and this is actually how we can live the best life is by thinking about these things at the same time.

• 8:49Arthur Brooks?

  So this may be the first time that you've ever thought seriously about eating and happiness. And if it is, I hope you get a lot out of it. This has really helped me in the way that I live my life. Now, a lot of debates out there, they rage about the virtues and drawbacks of certain very restrictive and regional diets. How to increase longevity and improve health. You know, you can go old school omnivore. You can be a lacto oval flexitarian. Google it. You can have the Mediterranean diet. You have the Okinawan diet. There's a million different diets out there, a million different ways of eating. Which ways of eating actually lead to the greatest levels of life satisfaction? That's a lot more subjective than individually figuring out which idea is best for your blood cholesterol levels.

• 9:32Arthur Brooks?

  On the contrary, there's a lot that talks about psychology and behavioral science and how things affect our brains uniquely in a way that that will help us feel better about our lives. This goes way beyond just what we like and not like. I mean, what you like matters. I mean, you could talk to me until you're blue in the face about how it's really, really good for, you know, my life. If I eat a lot of organ meats, I'm not going to eat organ meats. Sorry, they're gross. I don't want it, right? But it goes beyond just what I like and what I don't like. On the contrary, it isn't all subjective at all. What I really want to focus on today is not what you like, but to the objective social science and behavioral science. And what I want to talk about is the objective behavioral science and neuroscience that we can bring to bear

• 10:17Arthur Brooks?

  on how to improve our wellbeing based on our food and eating habits. Now, let's start with a basic fact. Eating is a pleasurable activity. People like to eat. Not everybody, there are some odd people out there who they find it objectionable or problematic. And one of the things that we actually find is when people are sick, are gravely ill. One of the characteristics, you know, the things that doctors will often look for when people are suffering from chronic disease is they don't just lose their appetite, they lose their pleasure that they get from how things taste. That's actually a giveaway, a dead giveaway that something's really, really wrong, as a matter of fact, because it's so unnatural.

• 10:59Arthur Brooks?

  The truth is that our brains are evolved to find feeding ourselves to be really rewarding. A whole bunch of different parts of our brain, it's interesting, there's a I'll put in a reference article on this. There's one that's interesting I found from 2015 that I liked when I read. Called "The Pleasure of Food: Underlying Brain Mechanisms of Eating and Other Pleasures." It's from a journal called Flavor. There's a journal called Flavor, I like that. So, the big parts of the brain, there's five parts of the brain that are fundamentally involved in the pleasure that comes from eating. The cingulate cortex, which connects rewards with action. The ventral tegmental area, which is really one of the big pleasure centers of the brain. You tap the ventral tegmental area and go, "Ah." Right, and this is one of the things that when people eat tasty food that they actually get.

• 11:44Arthur Brooks?

  The hypothalamus, which is where episodic memories are largely stored. This links reward to bodily drives like hunger. So you remember. The nucleus accumbens, which converts dopamine into motivation and anticipation. And last but not least, the ventral palidum, which is responsible for just liking. You know, it's the things that I like. That information is largely governed by the ventral palidum. And all these parts of the brain are implicated in eating, in the pleasure that we actually get from eating, especially eating the stuff that we like the most. But that actually is not linked to happiness per se. And the reason is because if you've followed my work for a while, you know that happiness doesn't come from pleasure, it comes from enjoyment. And if you don't believe me, think about all the people in your lives who say,

• 12:28Arthur Brooks?

  "My goal is pleasure." And it's like, "If it feels good, do it," said every hippie who ruined her or his life. Pleasure is not the road to happiness. Pleasure, per se, is the road to detox, man. But that doesn't mean that pleasure's bad, it just means that it's incomplete. So I'm gonna talk about how to complete it to create happiness in the way that you eat. What we want to get happier is not pleasure, per se, but enjoyment. Pleasure is related to enjoyment by adding two things to pleasure. Now, pleasure can come from almost anything that we really, really like. If it comes from, you know, wine, or gambling, or what we eat, or you know, how we spend our time. Something that gives you a lot of pleasure will become a source of happiness if you add people and memory.

• 13:12Arthur Brooks?

  Thus, moving the experience from the limbic system of your brain into the prefrontal cortex, where you can manage your pleasures and they don't manage you, and where it becomes permanent in your memory. So, to think about it this way, there's no beer commercials of a guy pounding a 12-pack in his apartment alone. And the reason is because that's saying that our product gives you pleasure, but that's also sort of sad and pathetic and lonely looking. What they have is the same guy opening a beer and clinking the bottles with his brother, his friends. Because what they're saying is our beer plus your friends making memories together equals enjoyment and that's part of happiness. That's how beer relates to happiness is through that circuitous route. The same thing is true with anything else.

• 13:56Arthur Brooks?

  If you're doing something that could be, that gives you a lot of pleasure and it could be addictive, which most things can, and food can be, if you're doing it alone, generally speaking, and mindlessly, you're probably doing it wrong for actually enhancing your happiness. And this is going to lead us to some of the conclusions that we come to later in this episode. But what we want is enjoyment from eating, not just pleasure from eating. Okay, and that's one of the reasons that there's two big practices that people get where their happiness rises with respect to the way that they eat. Number one is that they eat in group settings. So remember, people plus memory, plus the pleasure that we actually get from stimulating the ventral tegmental area and all the other parts of our brains, it rises a lot, especially when we eat in group settings.

• 14:40Arthur Brooks?

  Now evolutionary biology tells us that in our kin-based groups of 30 to 50 individuals from a quarter million years ago, when our brains were formed into the version that they largely exist in today, that we would understand ourselves and get a lot of enjoyment from our lives, a lot of meaning from our lives as well, by eating together. Having eye contact, it's the oxytocin release of the satisfaction that comes from being with your kin. A lot of it is when we're sitting around a campfire, putting yak meat into our mouths or something. We love to eat together. This is a highly communal activity in every culture is what we find. And sure enough, happiness rises when people eat together in group settings.

• 15:23Arthur Brooks?

  This is the first big practice of taking the pleasure from food and turning it into the enjoyment of eating. The second big practice that people have who get a lot of enjoyment from their food, and so therefore they get happiness from eating, is Is that they they savor, that they savor it. Um, these are people who or their enjoyment is really enhanced of memories of past meals. And so, once again, so the first one was people and the second one is memory, just like as I talked about a second ago. But the whole idea of savoring what you eat is really important, so not gobbling it up. And you know how kind of how this feels where you eat something that you really like, but you don't have any time. And you just sort of regret it. Okay, I'm gonna eat a Hershey's Hershey bar with almonds. I like that.

• 16:07Arthur Brooks?

  You know, Hershey's milk chocolate. I realize that that's like the most American thing ever. And and all you fancy Europeans who are watching is like, ah, like, by the way, do you want to know why Hershey's chocolate tastes different than Cadbury? It's because Hershey's chocolate is made with slightly sour milk. It gives a more complex flavor, which is why some people really like that now. You may be figuring out right now that I have a huge sweet tooth. If I can only have one kind of food on a desert island, it's gonna be sweets for sure. But the whole point is that if you, if I eat that chocolate bar, which I do not that frequently, because it's not very good for me. But I do, and I really, really like it. I enjoy it as opposed to getting pleasure from it when I savor it, which means I'm making memory.

• 16:48Arthur Brooks?

  Ideally, I should share it with my wife at the same time. So you're gonna people and memory as well. And so, you know, what a lot of foodies will do, and I'm not a foodie at all. I mean, I'm I'm I'm an ignoramus when it actually comes to recipes and cooking. I make I I cook a lot, but I make the same stuff over and over and over again. High protein, you know, content, moderate calories. Um, I'm pretty austere in its way, but in what I've I have a lot of friends who are seriously into food and they keep a food journal. That's what foodies do. The reason is because they want to remember these experiences that they had. They were social experiences. They were full. Human experiences around eating, which made it um a source of happiness to them. So the point of all this is if you want to get more happiness from your eating as opposed to just.

• 17:31Arthur Brooks?

  Pleasure from your food, turn the pleasure into enjoyment by number one, eating together and savoring your food.

• 17:39Arthur Brooks?

  That's what it comes down to. Okay, now, emotions are related to eating and it's sort of paradoxical because people will eat a lot and eat in an unhealthy way, both because of negative and positive emotions. So for example, you'll find, and there's a lot of studies that show this, I'll throw it into the, into the notes from 2011, that young people with depressive symptoms are 130%, 130% more likely than non-depressed people to binge eat. So binge eating is characteristic of clinical depression, is what we see all the time. And especially binge eating, the kinds of foods that will give you an immediate neurochemical reward, long-term trouble, but immediate neurochemical reward, more on that in a second.

• 18:22Arthur Brooks?

  But this, another study in the, in the journal Appetite, which, once again, there's so many journals out there, Appetite, which actually shows that, that people who are emotional eaters, they tend to binge eat on unhealthy foods when they're especially happy too. So it's like, these are people who really like going to birthday parties mostly because of the cake. It's like, I think I'll have seconds, I think I'll have thirds. I love celebrating because then you're gonna eat all this stuff is what, you know what people say under those circumstances. So if you're depressed, you're more likely to binge eat bad food, food that's bad for you. And if you're an emotional eater, so your emotions are highly tied to the way that you eat and you probably you struggle with, you know, health and weight, when you're especially happy, you'll eat as well, is what this comes down to.

• 19:05Arthur Brooks?

  So that's one of the reasons that, that managing your emotions is one of the ways that we can manage our diets. So now the main point, the main question that I get a lot on this topic, which patterns of eating and diets lead to the highest levels of happiness? So the first point that I want to make is that there are a number of studies that show that eating moderately often leads to the greatest amount of happiness. So this was a study from 2016 that showed, that compared people who eat once a day, people who eat twice a day, with people who eat moderately often, but not continuously, and specifically who eat three real no-fuelling meals and two snacks. These are the people who are happiest.

• 19:48Arthur Brooks?

  Now, still controlling calories, but it's spread out among those things. And, and by the way, this is, this is the Mediterranean diet, is really what we're talking about. And, and this was- Pretty revolutionary for me personally. I moved to Barcelona when I was 25 years old. I integrated immediately into my future wife's family. I was working completely immersed in an orchestra in Spain with Spaniards. I mean, I was, I went from American my whole life to overnight, living like a Spaniard, because there was no other way for me to live. There's no way for me to get peanut butter and jelly. There was no way for me to eat a sandwich at lunch. What I wound up doing was eating in this way that this 2016 study suggested leads to the most happiness.

• 20:30Arthur Brooks?

  The way that the Spaniards eat, the Catalans in Barcelona at least, is there's kind of generally two breakfasts. You eat something as soon as you wake up. You eat something in mid-morning. That's sort of breakfast food as well, you know, some toast, et cetera, coffee. You have coffee a couple of times in the morning. You have your main meal at about 2:30 in the afternoon, which is the heavy meal of the day. That's a big meal. And then you have a merienda, which is the afternoon snack. And then you have a supper, usually around nine o'clock at night is the way that that works. So you have this meal structure. And again, for me, it was really hard because I'm an early riser. I'm kind of a morning lark. I'm really a morning lark now, a 4:30 AM guy.

• 21:13Arthur Brooks?

  At the time, I was probably a 7 AM guy, which was a morning lark compared to the Spaniards. So the result of it is that eating at nine or 10 at night was kind of tricky, is the way that that worked out. But it was, it was great. And I was happy. And maybe it was I was happy because I was newly in love and I was in a really interesting place and I had a really fun job. But also, you know, I ate a lot of good food that I'd never experienced and I liked it. And the research suggests that that eating cadence, not necessarily those hours, but that level of frequency is associated with rare happiness. Now, that is not to say, okay, that's pretty frequent. I mean, breakfast, breakfast, midday meal, afternoon snack and supper. That's not to say that you should snack all day long.

• 21:57Arthur Brooks?

  And this is one of the characteristics of the modern American diet that we typically see. It's just this all-day grazing. I've seen some research that suggests that the average American gets 350 calories a day just from snacking. And there's, I've Seen some new work that that shows that a lot of young adults, they they never actually eat meals. They only eat snacks all day long, so they're never actually hungry for meals. That's really bad for your health and that's actually not good at all for your happiness. There's, once again, the 2016 study shows that all day grazing is actually bad for your happiness. So you don't get happier because you don't actually have that much enjoyment. What you have is kind of mindless pursuit of moment to moment pleasure in your eating.

• 22:38Arthur Brooks?

  And so you you leave out this opportunity to enjoy something and thus turn it into happiness. The happiest diets, they tend to be quite varied. Ruven Hoven, who's one of the great happiness researchers, Dutch happiness researchers.

• 22:54Arthur Brooks?

  He has published pretty much studies on every aspect of happiness. But one that he did was a meta-analysis in 2021 of menus that offer the highest life satisfaction. So a varied diet, a diet moderate in fats and oils, a diet low in salt and sugar. And and, you know, for example, just varied in all sorts of different ways to find out what leads to the highest level of happiness. And what he found was that that varying your diet a lot, eating a lot of different things without going berserk on anything or being overly restricted, this tends to lead to the greatest happiness. And again, I mean, it's like, I know a lot of you are saying, yeah, but I, because of my health, I can't eat dairy.

• 23:35Arthur Brooks?

  Or I'm allergic to something, or for ethical reasons, I'm a vegetarian or whatever happens to be good. I mean, that's fine. I'm just talking about what he found is that without, when you don't have health restrictions on your eating, a more varied diet tends to lead to greater well-being. And it's pretty significant what he finds in his work. More recent research than that, actually, which came out in 2023, found that proteins and fats tend to be associated with lower anxiety and depression. And so, you know, people who have ample proteins and fats in their diet, not too much, but but within normal boundaries, they tend to have lower anxiety, depression, whereas really high carbohydrate consumption is associated with with stress

• 24:16Arthur Brooks?

  and mood problems. And you can kind of imagine why that would be the case when you're spiking your carbohydrate, your your blood glucose levels, you're gonna see that reflected in your pulse and your blood pressure and and and your adrenal system. So there's no big shock on that. So keeping a very diet. Eating moderately often and keeping a very diet is just a... now, again, shocker, right? But for a lot of people that are really influenced by a lot of the more modern ideas coming across from influencers on the internet, this actually might be news that you can use. Right now, you're like Neo in The Matrix. You can keep scrolling, experiencing a simulation of life, or you can wake up to how your attention is being harvested for profit.

• 24:59Arthur Brooks?

  It's happening to people all over the world right now. You don't want to be productized like this anymore, but it's hard. Tech addiction is so potent because it's been designed to tap into your dopamine system, just like heroin, porn, gambling. You've got the cravings, you're addicted. You don't like it, and I don't either, but I can't just tell you to stop doing it. That's hard. If you want to break free from the system, you need an incentive. Here's one: Why don't you join a phone company that pays you not to use your phone? If you want to reduce brain rot, get Noble Mobile. It pays you to use less data. It gives you an incentive to unplug. Noble Mobile is the phone plan that finally aligns incentives with what's good for you.

• 25:41Arthur Brooks?

  Use less data, earn money back, and when you do, you'll be living once again in real life, and you're gonna like how it feels. Alcohol. What about alcohol? Alcohol consumption. A lot of the modern research on this is a little bit less supportive about alcohol consumption than work was in decades past. That you... a lot of... there was a lot of work in the past that suggested that a couple of drinks a day is actually good for you. That, for many people, might be too much, is what the new research suggests. I know that Andrew Huberman and his show, his great show, suggests two drinks a week is a good level of moderate consumption. There is research that suggests that, for some people, that it can be higher than that,

• 26:26Arthur Brooks?

  but the idea of drinking every day and drinking a lot every day, not good for your happiness. And again, that's the most obvious thing I've ever actually put on the show. But there are interesting studies talking about very, very moderate alcohol use and how it actually can lead to enjoyment and kind of unique pathways. There's a 2012 study in Psychological Science that brings people into the laboratory. I'll put it in the show notes. And, and then it, it asks people to have just a very moderate level of, of alcohol. They, they'll give them approximately one and a half drinks over like a 36 minute period. A little bit more for males, a little bit less for females, based on body weight. And then they're, they're strangers to each other. And then they'll have a conversation with each other. And what they were doing, the researchers were doing in the study is to look at their smiles.

• 27:11Arthur Brooks?

  And the reason is because there's a certain kind of smile called the Duchenne smile. That's uniquely associated with authentic happiness. It, it doesn't involve the mouth at all. It involves the orbicularis oculi muscles around the eyes and the zygomaticus major muscles and the tops of the cheek. And, and, and so you, you can tell in the eyes. And, and if you're looking at it, these micro muscle movements will betray your happiness. Very hard to, to simulate. You can, by the way, by putting a pencil in your teeth like that. And when you do that, that'll, that'll make you simulate a Duchenne smile. And believe it or not, it'll run the causality in the wrong way. And you'll actually feel a little bit happier when you do that because you fool your brain. That's the trick you can use.

• 27:53Arthur Brooks?

  But what they find is that when people have this really moderate level of alcohol consumption and they have a conversation with a complete stranger, that the Duchenne smiles are a lot more pronounced. They are feeling more enjoyment, happiness or enjoyment than people who are actually getting just, um, you know, they're getting just lemonade or something in, in the experiment. Which by the way, when you're going into an alcohol experiment, they sit you down and you're the one who gets lemonade. Maybe that's where you're mad, you know, maybe that's the confound, but, but you get my point. So, so, so you have to decide, but the bottom line is there's no research that says that anything above low to moderate alcohol use is good for your happiness. I'm very supportive of the idea who, of people who can drink moderately, good for you. That's great. I don't drink alcohol because I have a lot of trouble with it in my family.

• 28:37Arthur Brooks?

  But for people who can, that's great. And, um, and that can be a good blessing for you in your life. But moderately, only moderately. Junk food, junk food and desserts. Why do people eat junk food and desserts? And the answer is because they like it. It feels good because it gives them pleasure. And that pleasure is a little stimulus of a feeling that they like. But you already know that it rarely can translate itself into enjoyment. And so therefore, at the end of the day, it's not a source of happiness is eating unhealthy stuff. As a matter of fact, in excess, food that's high in sugar and processed ingredients, that tends to lead to mood disturbances. What you find, the mood benefits that we get, they last a few minutes.

• 29:20Arthur Brooks?

  But the downside is that you're doing something that typically is addictive, highly processed ingredients and especially processed sugar. They tend to be very addictive in the way that they affect our brains. There's a lot of stuff on that. I'll throw something into the show notes so you can see that if you're interested in it. But it also leads to psychological distress, especially in the case of children and adolescents. Furthermore, since it's addictive, junk food is, can lead to real withdrawal symptoms and actual clinical anxiety as people are withdrawing from it. I'm not going to talk about it as if it were heroin because it's not. You know, having an occasional piece of chocolate, which I do, is not what we're talking about. Again, this is moderation that we're talking about here. I mean, I go to a birthday party, you offer me a piece of cake. I'm probably going to eat it or at least part of it. There's a lot of stuff that I really, really like.

• 30:04Arthur Brooks?

  But the point is that if I'm left to my devices with this ferocious sweet tooth, I'll eat, eat, eat, eat, eat. It's going to be a problem is the way that works out. So don't do that. Be moderate with the way that you use junk food and the way that you use desserts, because these are things that have a deleterious impact when you go past moderate levels with respect to your happiness. The same thing is true with diets high in saturated fat. They tend to, believe it or not, be associated with memory impairment. So if you eat something that's like really sweet and full of fat, you might not remember eating it. All right, here's one that a lot of you are interested in, which is vegetarianism. I have an on again, off again, history with keeping vegetarian.

• 30:44Arthur Brooks?

  I don't now because I try to get between 150 and 200 grams of protein a day. Muscle protein synthesis after 60 is very inefficient, which means you need to eat a lot of protein to maintain muscle mass and stay strong, especially if you're. Lifting weights, which everybody over 60 should be lifting weights. And so for me, it's really hard, but it's possible still to get that kind of protein content with veg- being a vegetarian, just had to work really, really hard and maybe I'm just a little bit lazy. But off and on in my life, I have lived this way. When I was a kid, we had a very, very healthy lifestyle. My mom grew a lot of our vegetables. She canned our vegetables. We kept a vegetarian diet, six days a week. One day a week, we actually ate meat. She had us on brewer's yeast capsules, you know, the whole thing.

• 31:29Arthur Brooks?

  I grew up in Seattle, you gotta understand, and it was great. I was super healthy as a kid, as a matter of fact. And so the idea that if you're, you know, it's child abuse, if you don't give your kid meat, that's not true. That's not what we're talking about here. You just need to be careful and serious about the way that you eat. And if you're keeping a restricted diet, you have to be more serious about both micro and macronutrient levels. Here, the subject is how vegetarianism, for example, relates to happiness. And what the research finds, interesting article in the Journal of Happiness Studies, article called "Conceptualizations of Happiness and Vegetarianism: Empirical Evidence From University Students in Spain", my beloved Spain, they found that vegetarianism tends to raise a sense of tranquility, but lowers enjoyment.

• 32:13Arthur Brooks?

  Okay, so people enjoy their eating less, which is bad for happiness, but it raises tranquility more, which is good for happiness. So you gotta decide. Everything's got a trade off to it. However, we find that a very low fat, fully vegan diet can be very helpful for people who have mood disorders, most notably depression and anxiety. Very interesting stuff from the American Journal of Health Promotion, work that, that, you know, randomized controlled trials. So as the people were suffering from depression and anxiety, when they go on a fully vegan diet, they can get, they can get significant level of alleviation of symptoms. Okay, what about diets? Weight loss diets. The overconsumption of foods that lead to obesity, that's associated with lower levels of well being

• 32:56Arthur Brooks?

  because of obesity and because of the health problems that are attendant upon obesity. Obviously, those are second and third order effects and everybody knows that for sure. I want to talk about actually happens when people are, are doing different kinds of diets. Crash diets, where you're trying to lose a ton of weight, horrible for your happiness. And so you've done that, you find that, that, that most diets work, low fat, low carb, whatever they happen to be. Most work, but most are ultimately unsuccessful. And there's a happiness reason for that. You get a lot of- Satisfaction that comes from the progress of seeing the scale go down. Yeah, and so you're willing to absolutely forego what you like. And and to a certain extent, you're you're willing to feel hunger. Because you're getting that reward every day. But when you hit your target weight,

• 33:41Arthur Brooks?

  your reward is never getting to eat what you like ever again for the rest of your life. So congratulations to you on that, which is why diets have somewhere between an 80 and 95% failure rate. That's why, because the because of the arrival fallacy that I've talked about ad nauseam on this show. The progress is great, the arrival is terrible, is what it comes down to. But also, it's incredibly uncomfortable and and and you don't have enough willpower in the world to to get past what some people call protein hunger. So you can be hungry and and you're not getting, you know, you can be feel a little bit hungry and then not eat potato chips or something. Most people have the willpower to do that. But when you're low on protein and you're hungry, that's all you're thinking about is food. And that hurts and you're gonna lose.

• 34:26Arthur Brooks?

  You're basically gonna lose that battle. This is how that comes about. Yeah, and you'll go a little insane, too. There's a very interesting study from the 40s, as a matter of fact. Many of you have heard about the Minnesota starvation experiment, where a bunch of guys that came back from World War II got paid for spending about three, something like three to six months, living on 1,600 calories a day. And these are people that were, you know, living a normal, active lifestyle, but on 1,600 calories a day. On average, over the period of the study, they lost 25% of their body weight. So it was very wasting. They lost muscle mass that all, basically, all of the fat of their bodies was, you know, melted off. They were probably in, you know, 3, 4% body fat. And and they lost a lot of muscle mass as well. But the interesting thing about it was the psychological implications of doing that,

• 35:09Arthur Brooks?

  which are very similar to what we see psychologically to people who run crash diets and they're and they're protein hungry. They found tons of depression, really substantial anxiety, anger and obsessive behavior. They talked about one guy who started a spoon collection. It's like a spoon collection. This here's what, when I'm done with this experiment, here's what I'm gonna use to eat cereal. And here's what I'm gonna use to eat soup, because he was obsessed with food. Another guy who had no interest in cooking started collecting recipes. And so that's obsessive behavior and and you know if you're going in that direction by the way, if you are, if you're too hungry, if when you're eating one meal, you're already thinking about the next meal. That's characteristic what we find is diagnostic as a matter of fact.

• 35:53Arthur Brooks?

  You're you're finishing breakfast going, oh, but for lunch, I'm gonna have, you know, whatever, that probably isn't going to fill you up enough. And so that's one of the one of the key points that you're on the wrong side, certainly of the happiness curve and probably it's not good for you as well. So, you know, all kinds of diets that you can healthfully and, you know, and sustainably lose weight, that's great. That's that can be perfectly good for your happiness, but crash diets and ones where you actually experience the physiological sensation of starvation, really, really bad for your happiness, really bad for your mental health is what we find. Intermittent fasting is just a thing or or time restricted eating is what a lot of people are talking about, has no evident impact on anxiety or mood, because that's something that's completely sustainable.

• 36:37Arthur Brooks?

  So it's not as if that, you know, you decide you're gonna go sixteen eight or whatever it is for your eating. I like to go twelve twelve. I like to have a twelve hour period, but I don't eat anything. No impact, no negative impact on on depression or anxiety. So that's not what we're talking about. That's safe. Okay, Ozempic or GLP one drugs. What's the effect of GLP one drugs? And the answer is nobody's done the studies. I want to know, I want to know, I want to, I want randomized controlled trials where people are given GLP ones or a or a placebo. And I want to look at their well being scores going forward. However, the studies on GLP one drugs in their previous incarnation to treat diabetes shows that diabetic patients who use GLP one drugs tend to show a better scores on anxiety and depression.

• 37:22Arthur Brooks?

  They're less anxious and they're less depressed is what we find. So at very least, we should expect that people who are appropriately using GLP one drugs for weight loss are probably not going to see adverse effects on their happiness. They might just find good effects on their happiness. Okay, what are some rules that we can get from this for how to eat? I'm gonna give you my top eight. What are my top eight? For eating rules that will lead you to greater happiness. Number one, and by the way, this is just Spanish eating. That's what it comes down to. So, but you can do it in any cuisine. I'm not talking about just eating a bunch of lentils and buty farra or something like that. You're gonna eat what you want to eat. But the bottom line is here, here are the rules that actually are based on the science that work pretty well.

• 38:04Arthur Brooks?

  Number one, as much as you can, based on your sensitivities, your ethics and your health, balanced across a lot of food, balanced across a variety of food. Right? Number two, emphasizing proteins and fats or carbohydrates is a good practice. Not ruling out all carbohydrates because restrictive diets are generally problematic, but emphasizing protein and fat over carbohydrates. Three, avoiding junk food and very moderate use of refined sweets. So if you can cut out junk food almost entirely and you can have sweets just on special occasions, that's the way to go. Four, alcohol consumption should be moderate. So if you're gonna consume alcohol, and by the way, you don't have to consume alcohol

• 38:46Arthur Brooks?

  to get happier, a lot of research on that, but if you do, you should be a moderate drinker. Number five, recreational drinking is a no-no. Right? And so it's like, if it's binge drinking to celebrate, that's really, really bad for your health. It's also bad for your happiness. Six, avoiding obesity is important for happiness, but not to the extent of crash weight loss programs or yo-yo diets that mimic starvation. Right? So be careful with the way that you try to lose weight for your happiness. It has to be sustainable. It has to be gradual. It has to be super, super healthy. Number seven is organized, regular, formal meal times without snacking. That's the best way to do it. Eat a lot, I mean, eat frequently, but don't snack. And last but not least, eat together with other people.

• 39:28Arthur Brooks?

  Make it part of who you are as a person and what you do socially with other people. One more thing to keep in mind, and this one comes from my wife. So maybe it's not from the literature, from my literature. My wife thinks it's weird how obsessed Americans are, how obsessed so many Americans are with food. I mean, a lot of people in Spain like to cook and they like to eat, but they're not talking about it. It's not a hobby, really. And she thinks that that obsession that we have actually, you know, obsession with food is like an obsession with antique yo-yos or something. It's kind of, it's evidence of odd behavior.

• 40:03Arthur Brooks?

  And that always made me laugh that she feels that way about us. But, but also it betrays a deeper truth that we often find in psychology, which is when you raise any ordinary part of life to something around which you're basing a whole lot of your attention, it's usually not a healthy thing. You know, people were talking about sex all day long. It's like, you know, it's like, come on, man, that's not normal. Right? That, that, and food is kind of the same thing. It should be, you shouldn't live to eat. You should eat to live is how that works out. If you want to have a good, balanced and healthy lifestyle. The point of food isn't food. The point of food is life and love. Well, there you are. I hope that's been helpful to you.

• 40:45Arthur Brooks?

  Let me address a couple of questions now and then we'll be done. This first one is from Jonathan Harrell, officehours at ortho books.com. I'm curious about the neuroscience of how books activate our left brain. Do they activate our brain in the same way that phones do? Is there a difference between reading educational versus fiction? I'd love to know if reading is a true alternative to boredom or just a better package distraction. Books don't hijack your brain, as a matter of fact. They actually require you to use your brain more, much more fully than, than what electronics do, than what tech does. One of the things about television before we had small screens is that it captivated so much of our brains that it allowed us to imagine things less. When you're reading a book, for example,

• 41:30Arthur Brooks?

  you will be using your visual cortex in a way that's imaginative. You know, you're seeing it's one of the things, one of the reasons that you'll, you might find that you're disappointed when you see the movie version of a book you loved. Because like, no, it was better in my head. The movie was better in my head than it was in Hollywood. Right? And furthermore, that you're unlikely to want to read a book after you've seen a movie because it's captured your brain. Well, the small screen and tech is designed to, to just grab your brain and hold on to it, just put hooks into it in a way that television can't even approach, which means that once again, you're using less and less and less and less of your imagination. Books are the best way to do that. They're taking you on a journey while helping you to, allowing you to have your own flight of fancy at the same time,

• 42:14Arthur Brooks?

  which is why it's just a lot healthier. There's way less dopamine involved. There's a lot more of. Your default mode network at work. Can you read too much? And this is interesting, actually. There's a famous quote that's often attributed to Einstein. I don't know who said it because it's like one of these things. Who knows? Should be Einstein, put it that way. That many people read too much. And I actually find this in my field, that there are people, scholars, who actually become unproductive because they overconsume what they read and they don't use reading for investment in their own output. You know, it's like when a scholar, somebody in my profession says, you know, I read three books a week.

• 42:59Arthur Brooks?

  I'm kind of suspicious that maybe they're not very productive in writing any books or doing any research because the reading becomes consumption versus investment. You have to decide what you want to do. But depending on what you do, you absolutely can read too much. You need more thinking. You need more idle time. You need less distraction at certain points in your life. I hope that helps, Jonathan. Lauren Prescott, once again, writing into the website. Is there a difference between the concept of leisure, which I did a whole episode on, and the concept of Sabbath in the scripture? That's a good question. And it really depends on how you use it. Sabbath has obvious religious implications, where we are dedicating our rest to worship.

• 43:43Arthur Brooks?

  We're dedicating our rest to exaltation of the divine. That's what Sabbath literally means in many religions. And obviously in Judaism and Christianity and Islam, Abrahamic religions, but others as well. They have prescribed days and times when you're not supposed to do your work for money. You're not supposed to earn your daily bread. You're supposed to eat your daily bread. You're supposed to be doing something else. So how do you use it? And the answer is, well, according to Joseph Piper, the German philosopher, real leisure that's really good is kind of Sabbath-like leisure, where you're doing one of three things. You're deepening your faith. You're deepening your relationships. And you're learning things that are completely unrelated to your work.

• 44:28Arthur Brooks?

  So, which is really important, right? To be able to do that. Because these are deeply, deeply spiritually and emotionally, psychologically sustaining activities. So it's not just chilling on a beach, but it's also not like sneaking in a couple of hours of work to get ahead on Monday. It requires that you be, you know, reading scripture and praying. One of the things that my wife and I like to do on Sunday afternoons is we go over the Because we go to Mass on Sunday morning is that we look at the reading, the gospel reading for that day and we study it. You know, she's, my wife has, her graduate training is in, is in theology. And so she knows a lot and her library at home is vast. And so we'll go through what the early church father said, what Thomas Aquinas said, what St. Augustine said. And, uh, and it's great because we actually learn that way,

• 45:10Arthur Brooks?

  which also deepens our relationship with each other because reading to each other, as you know, is a, is a sacred form of communication and really, really important. I've had, I've actually done an episode on that. And then it's kind of, it's learning, which is really unrelated to my work. Nobody's going to say, nobody's going to pay me to understand what I learned about the gospel from the day before, because that's just not what I do for a living. So those are ways to actually think about that is having leisure in this kind of, these profound Sabbath-like ways. We're done. If you want to write in, I would love to hear what you have to say about this episode or any other episode or any suggestions you've got. [email protected], like and subscribe on Spotify, Apple, YouTube. Leave a comment. I can't wait to hear about it. Follow us on socials and don't forget to order The Meaning of Your Life,

• 45:52Arthur Brooks?

  my new book, Dead for Somebody That You Love, and I'll see you next week.

• 46:06Speaker 02

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