Eggs, meat and happiness

Eggs, meat and happiness

If it doesn’t kill you, it may at least make you happy!

The reason that I decided to spend some time pondering this meaty question is that as of today, no one can say for sure if cholesterol in food is good or bad for you. The scientific evidence is all over the place and the community is divided, with equally vociferous opponents and proponents for restricting cholesterol in diet. And the divide is bitter: learned people are ready to bite each other’s heads off at the mere mention of the words cholesterol, eggs or red meat. As a result, the hapless lay person has to contend with recommendations ranging from sticking to the staid “egg-white” omelette, to drinking clarified butter for breakfast. This situation doesn’t bode well for anybody’s health, physical or mental. In my considered opinion, when there is this much uncertainty about the metabolic consequences of any food, there is only one question that needs answering: Does it make the consumer happy? So I set out to see if there is any truth in the widely held belief that cholesterol containing foods provide much happiness to people worldwide.

I looked at egg and meat consumption as a proxy for dietary cholesterol intake. I obtained data on global per-capita egg consumption for the year 2011 from the Atlas of the Global Egg Industry (trust me, there is really such a thing!) Data on meat consumption are from the OECD (https://data.oecd.org/agroutput/meat-consumption.htm). To calculate total per capita cholesterol consumption from both egg and meat consumption, I used the cholesterol content tables provided by the UCSF (approximately 210 mg/egg and 80 mg/100 gm of meat, https://www.ucsfhealth.org/education/cholesterol_content_of_foods/) Finally, I used the Happiness Index published as part of the World Happiness Report 2018 as a proxy for country level happiness. (https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2018/)

Data on per capita egg consumption were available for 42 countries. Surprisingly, the Mexicans turned out to be the biggest egg consumers on the planet. Must be all the huevos rancheros that go down in those parts. The Brazilians were positively ovo-phobic in comparison, but their love of meat compensated for any lack of cholesterol in their diet. The Americans consumed the most meat per capita, over 30 times more than the average Indian! The Australians and Argentinians were the next two most prolific meat eaters. There were no surprises in the happiness rankings. The Nordic countries and Switzerland hogged the top spots. I excluded the Ukrainians from this analysis as they were unhappy outliers, presumably due to recent events in their region that had nothing to do with eggs (which they consumed by the bucketful).

There was fair correlation between egg consumption and happiness at the national level explaining about 10% of the variance in the Happiness Index. (Chart 1) Meat consumption showed an even better correlation, explaining nearly half of the variance in national level happiness. (Chart 2) The OECD database provided only the EU average for per capita meat consumption. In order to include as many countries as possible in the analysis, I used the EU average consumption for individual EU countries and repeated the analysis. The correlation remained, though somewhat attenuated (R² 0.31, p=0.00019). Finally, the overall per capita cholesterol consumption (from meat and eggs) showed good correlation with the happiness index. (Chart 3)

Chart 1: Egg consumption and happiness

Chart 2: Meat consumption and happiness

Chart 3: Cholesterol consumption and happiness

Contentment and cholesterol

These results are not surprising. They simply bear out the common experience that feeding people good food makes them happy. This also explains why our friends and colleagues who are on a diet look and feel miserable. For those needing more convincing, I would refer you to more sciency write-ups on the neural mechanisms behind hedonic eating which you may read at your peril. (https://flavourjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13411-014-0029-2)

Could this correlation be simply a reflection of per capita GDP? It is quite possible, but there are several middle income countries which seem to eat well beyond their means and appear to be the happier for it. And also, as more legitimate publications than this have pointed out, well-being is never only about the money. (https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2016/07/20/measuring-well-being) Finally, it may occur to you (rightly so) that this analysis does not take into account the cholesterol contained in dairy and seafood. I offer no scientifically valid reason for this omission other than sheer laziness on my part (which may not be a scientific reason, but remains a valid one nevertheless).

So, in short, it appears that eating cholesterol laden foods makes you happy. But the results may vary from person to person.*

*This is not a disclaimer like the one you find at the end of an ad. I added this to avoid any disappointment, as it is not wise to draw inferences at the individual level based on group level data (something called the ecological fallacy). As a standard disclaimer, I must also add that I have no personal conflicts of interest in relation to this piece. I have nothing to do with the egg or meat industry (or the anti-cholesterol drug industry for that matter), and while I have the occasional egg for breakfast, I don’t particularly fancy meat.