The Big Money Is Going Vegan–New York Times, May 18, 2021Alternative dairy company Oatly’s successful IPO exemplifies the changes in consumer preferences that are reshaping the food business. The stunning rise of the producer of dairy substitutes shows that it’s no longer enough for food to taste good and be healthy—it needs to be good for the planet as well. Can the established big food players…
Our mental health crashed in 2020. Recovery could take years–CNET, May 2, 2021 COVID-19, lockdowns and financial pressures have inflicted emotional wounds around the world. In the US, anxiety and depression jumped 200% in 2020; in the UK, 31% of people reported depression severe enough to justify “high-intensity psychological support.” Harvard researchers argue that mental health issues rose in a third of the global population, noting:…
Making wellbeing a policy priority: lessons from the 2021 World Happiness Report–The Brookings Institution, April 6, 2021 Every year, the World Happiness Report tracks individual life satisfaction and the emotional “temperature” of societies around the world. In the new report, three lessons stand out for improving societal wellbeing and sustainable economies (the two go hand-in-hand): (1) Mental health has declined—especially among the most vulnerable; (2)…
There are numerous pathways to mental wellness, many of which are known to us but often seem like an impossible to-do list. In GWI’s report Defining the Mental Wellness Economy, we segment them into four broad categories: 1) activity and creativity, 2) growth and nourishment, 3) rest and rejuvenation, and 4) connection and meaning. These domains have mind-body and internal-external dimensions, although their boundaries may…
The pandemic as a wake-up call for personal health–New York Times, March 10, 2021 An important reflection on what the pandemic has taught us about the cost of our failure to focus on preventative health, diet and exercise, and combatting obesity—and the “misguided reliance on medicine to patch up…our self-inflicted wounds.” With obesity the second leading risk factor for death from COVID-19 (behind age), and…
Defining Mental Wellness Mental wellness is a term that is increasingly used in the popular lexicon, but it is vague and not well-understood. People associate mental wellness with many different types of activities: meditating, listening to music, talking to a friend, taking a walk in nature, taking a vacation, getting a massage, taking a bubble bath, squeezing a stress ball, or just carving out some…
