It is something we all strive for, discovering the key to true happiness.
And while love, friends, family and for some, money, maybe the goal, a new study has revealed a surprising finding.
A team of researchers claim the path to happiness is achieved by eating vanilla yogurt.
They discovered people showed strong, positive emotional responses to low-fat varieties of the plain flavor.
The researchers from Wageningen UR Food & Biobased Research in the Netherlands, the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Austria and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, looked at three groups of at least 24 study participants' emotional responses when they ate yogurt.
Yogurts with different fruits in them generally didn't affect the participants' moods, the study found.
Lead researcher, Dr Jozina Mojet, from Food & Biobased Research, said: 'We were surprised to find that by measuring emotions, we could get information about products independent from whether people like them.
The study utilized different tactics to measure participants' emotional responses, including a new research method known as an emotive projection test to determine what effect the yogurts would have on people's moods.
The researchers showed study participants photographs of other people and then asked them to rate the people on six positive and six negative rates.
According to the study, people project their emotions on to others, so their moods can be indicated through their judgment of others.
The three participant groups were then given pairs of yogurt to taste, each of which were the same brand and marketing, though they had different fat content or flavors.
The researchers measured the participants' emotions using four methods, including the emotive projection test.
Liking or knowing a brand of yogurt didn't affect the participants' emotions, but the changes of the yogurt did, according to the study.
Being pleasantly surprised or disappointed by the yogurt affected the participants' moods, though.
Researchers also determined that there was no difference in the participants' responses to pineapple or strawberry yogurts, though lower-fat versions caused them to have more positive responses.
The team of scientists said their most surprising conclusion was that vanilla yogurt drew very strong positive responses from the participants.
This supports previous evidence that understated vanilla scents in hospital waiting rooms and other stressful places can reduce aggression and encourage relationships between staff and patients.
The study also suggests that this new emotive response method could be used as an effective way to gather information about a product before it goes to market.
Dr Mojet added: 'We were looking for a valid, quick and not too expensive and time-consuming method to measure the emotions or mood changes evoked by food.
The study was published in the journal Food Research International.