The earlier you start, the better. Eating a healthy diet from an early age leads to the biggest gains in life expectancy. But even people who wait until middle age or later to improve their eating habits can still add years to their lives.
The research is empowering for several reasons. It shows that you don’t necessarily have to change your diet to benefit from it. Even small changes, like adding a handful of nuts to your daily diet for a lunchtime snack and cutting back on processed meats like ham and hot dogs, can potentially add years to your life. And it suggests that even if you’re in your 60s or older, these relatively small changes to your diet can still yield big benefits.
A healthy nutritional boost at any age
In a study in the New England Journal of Medicine, scientists followed around 74,000 people between the ages of 30 and 75 over two decades. During this time, they analyzed their diet and lifestyle habits and tracked changes in their diet. The researchers used several rating systems to assess the quality of their diets, including the Alternate Healthy Eating Index developed by nutrition experts at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.
The index gives low scores to unhealthy foods and higher scores to healthier foods. Foods that received high scores included fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, beans, whole grains, and foods high in unsaturated fats and heart-healthy omega-3s, such as fish, avocados, and olive oil. Some of the unhealthy foods that received lower scores were things like red and processed meats, and foods high in sodium and added sugars, like sugar-sweetened drinks, pizza, potato chips, and other junk foods.
The more nutritious foods people ate and the less junk food they consumed, the higher their nutritional scores. The researchers found that people with consistently high nutritional values were up to 14 percent less likely to die than people with consistently poor diets during the study period.
But perhaps most importantly, people who improved their eating habits saw huge benefits. The researchers found that people who increased their diet by just 20 percent during the study had at least an 8 percent reduction in mortality over the study period and a 7 to 15 percent reduction in their likelihood of dying, particularly from heart disease. Achieving a 20 percent increase in your diet score could be as simple as replacing the sugary drinks in your diet with sparkling water and eating at least a handful of nuts or a serving of beans or lentils daily, said Mercedes Sotos-Pieto, the lead author of the studies.
She pointed out that most of the participants in the study were over 60, showing that it’s never too late to benefit from improving your eating habits. The reduction in mortality among people who improved their eating habits was largely due to a lower incidence of cardiovascular disease, which is strongly influenced by diet. Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide.
Just add nuts, grains, beans and peas
Sotos-Pieto found that by making small and gradual improvements in your food choices over time, eating a more nutritious diet can help you lose weight and lower your cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar and inflammation — all of which can improve your cardiovascular health and likelihood of a heart attack or stroke.
“It’s not necessary to make dramatic lifestyle changes,” said Sotos-Pieto, an assistant professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid and an associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. “Choose small goals that you can achieve and maintain over time.”
In another study published in PLOS Medicine earlier this year, scientists analyzed large amounts of data on the effects of different foods on the risk of premature death. They then used this data, along with other research on deaths and chronic disease rates, to estimate how changes in a person’s diet might affect their life expectancy at different ages.
Researchers found that a 20-year-old who switched from a typical Western diet to an optimal Mediterranean diet (and stayed there) was able to extend their life expectancy by an average of 11 to 13 years. But senior citizens could also benefit: a 60-year-old who makes this change could increase his life expectancy by up to nine years, and an 80-year-old could gain around three and a half years.
The study found that the biggest gains in life expectancy came from eating more legumes, such as beans, peas, lentils and peanuts. If revising your diet seems like a daunting task, start small by adding a few extra-essential foods to your diet.
- Eat a handful of nuts every day
- Add a few servings of whole grains to your diet. Switch to brown rice instead of white rice.
- Eat at least one cup of beans, lentils, or peas daily. Add chickpeas to a salad; Eat a burrito bowl with black or pinto beans.
- Add nut butters (peanut butter or almond butter) to toast, oatmeal, or yogurt for breakfast.
The outsized health benefits you get from eating more legumes, nuts and whole grains come from their metabolic profile, said Lars Fadnes, the lead author of the PLOS Medicine study and a professor at the University of Bergen in Norway. These foods are nutrient dense and contain large amounts of fiber, vitamins and minerals.
Legumes, for example, are high in protein and contain several B vitamins, iron, copper, magnesium, manganese, zinc and phosphorus, he said. These foods have also been shown in clinical studies to reduce inflammation and improve cholesterol and other metabolic markers that affect your lifespan.
Fadnes stressed that if you eat a lot of junk food, the sooner you change your eating habits, the better it is. Even for people who are overweight, older and in poor metabolic health, the benefits you can get from eating more nutritious foods are “probably significant,” he said.
Do you have a question about healthy eating? E-mail [email protected] and we may answer your question in a future column.
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