Study puts paid to the ‘shop ’til you drop’ adage

SO finally, a study has found that shopping is good for you — in fact it makes you live longer.

This report is full of shocks, the first being that men — who, for the main part, just don’t “get” the unadulterated joy of shopping — have put their lives at risk by their refusal to embrace shopping.

It shows that men over the age of 65 who shop regularly are 28% less likely to die than their peers who don’t shop or won’t shop. Regular women shoppers (clever gals who cottoned onto the whole thing yonks ago) are 25% less likely to die than women who aren’t into shopping.

The other great shock is that this groundbreaking study wasn’t commissioned by Tesco, Dunnes, Debenhams or any of the big multinational chains that have homogenised city and townscapes worldwide.

In fact the research comes from the respected Institute of Population Health Sciences and National Defence Medical Centre in Taiwan, and the Asia Pacific Health and Nutrition Centre in Australia and is published in the respected Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. It follows on from research completed on 1,850 Taiwanese people aged 65 or over who were surveyed on their health and lifestyles in 1999/2000, and matched them to their deaths in 1999 and 2008.

It concluded: “Shopping captures several dimensions of personal wellbeing, health and security as well as contributing to the community’s cohesiveness and economy, and may represent or actually confer increased longevity.”

Their intellectual and physical capacities, age, gender, education, ethnicity, financial and employment status, lifestyle factors and the prevalence of long-term conditions were also factored in.

The authors of the study acknowledged that shopping could reflect people having good health to begin with. “An elder who shops less for food would be at risk of poorer diet quality necessary to maintain health. A vicious cycle that involves limited shopping and poor diet could evolve for elders.”

However, the authors added: “Everyday shoppers had a favourable survival even with control for functional health. It is possible daily shopping might have a direct impact on survival.”

Shopping, they believe, provides exercise and allows people to feel part of a community “in a safe and convenient environment”.

It does however entirely undermine that phrase “shop ‘til you drop”. It’s more like “shop or you’ll drop”.