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A recent study published in the British Journal of Nutrition looked at the revelations of smartphone survey data concerning the timecourse of changes in mood outcomes following vitamin C or kiwifruit intervention in adults with low vitamin C.

“This study analyses secondary outcomes from our main trial (KiwiC for Vitality study) published in 2020,” study author Professor Tamlin Conner of the Department of Psychology at the University of Otago told us. “The secondary outcomes used smartphone surveys of people’s mood every second day throughout the 8-week intervention trial.”

Although foods high in Vitamin C have been shown to benefit mood, the timing of the improvements has been relatively not known. The current study and research team looked at data from a three-year smartphone survey that had participants using Vitamin C and kiwifruit or a placebo.

"This approach is novel in nutrition research because it allowed us to determine how quickly mood changed in response to the vitamin C intervention, and whether mood changes were sustained across the trial,” Conner told us.

It’s been determined that this is the first study to use smartphone surveys to analyze data relating to the timecourse of mood after participants ingested Vitamin C.

"We were surprised that mood improved in as early as 4-days into the trial in the kiwifruit condition. Mood improvements also disappeared as quickly when participants stopped eating the kiwifruit in the two-week washout period at the end of the trial,” Conner told us.

The study results found that within a short span of time of less than a week to just over two weeks, eating kiwifruit and supplementing with Vitamin C can in fact benefit mood. Eating a whole kiwi as opposed to taking a vitamin showed better results.

"Vitamin C is processed quickly in the body, and we think mood improvements corresponded to when participants’ blood vitamin C levels reached saturation,” Conner told us. Vitamin C is an important micronutrient critical to physical and mental health. The present study suggest that whole-food sources of vitamin C may help restore mood in those with low vitamin C levels. For those highly deficient in vitamin C, we also encourage supplementation with vitamin C to accelerate the rate of restoration of vitamin C in the body."