I read in yesterday’s Times Eureka magazine of Taiwanese research which found that people over 65 years of age who shop every day are more likely to survive the next ten years than those who do not. Even though this is a science magazine, no details of where to find the research were given, but I was able to track down a summary via the BBC news website.
The research was based on data from a sample of ‘1841 representative free-living elderly Taiwanese people’ collected in 1999-2000, linked to official death records. After adjusting for other factors, such as physical & mental health, statistical analysis revealed that those free-living spirits who shopped every day had reduced, by over a quarter, their risk of dying during the nine years of the study period.
That’s as far as I can get without a subscription to BMJ journals, so I cannot find out how many more years my daily shopping habit might give me, nor if it makes any difference what kind of shop you go to, what kind of goods you buy & whether you walk, drive or use the bus to get there, or even if on-line shopping counts, but I shall cite the evidence to anyone who challenges me about what they see as unusual behaviour. Many people I know think that it is bad enough having to go to the supermarket once a week.
For me however, being able to shop every day from the very late seventies or early eighties came as a real liberation after well over a decade of having to cope with a full time job in the days when shops were open only 9 to 5 Mondays to Saturdays, with early closing on Wednesday. Some small shops even closed for lunch.
You had to do your shopping on Saturday, then ironing & cooking for the week ahead took care of most of Sunday & that was your weekend – gone.
I still find that rhythm of daily shopping much more relaxing than alternative routines or timetables
