Since the day my daughter had her first bite of solid food, I?ve been fretting over her diet. I mashed organic peas, pureed heritage tomatoes, and froze nutritious soups. When she got older, I made sure she finished her broccoli and that sugar wasn’t the only carbohydrate in her meals. I might have been slightly obsessive, I admit, but I wanted to make sure she grew up healthy and strong.
In the meantime I was writing stories on health and nutrition and digging through hundreds of research papers a year. And out of this research a new story began emerging, whether I liked it or not?that while I fixated on organic produce and whole grains, I was missing another vital ingredient for what makes children live healthy and long lives: kindness. I know, I know, it sounds a bit silly. Everyone knows they should teach their kid to be kind to others. But the benefits of doing so go way beyond what I thought. Science has shown time and again that kindness in all its forms?be it volunteering, charity donations or even small, everyday acts of helpfulness?can boost our immune systems, lower the risk of type 2 diabetes and cancer, and even prolong lives. ?Not only does helping others promote happiness, it can predict health benefits for our kids, too,? says Lara Aknin, an associate professor of social psychology at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC.
An act of kindness goes a long way
When I was looking into this, I found a study that had been done at a high school in western Ca...