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Love Food That Loves You Back to Extend Your Life

Hadley’s intro:  Even if you wait until your 60’s to eat nutritious foods,

you may add healthy years to your life.  Get the scoop courtesy of

a Washington Post article

By Anahad O’Connor
October 18, 2022 at 6:01 a.m. EDT

No matter how old you are, or how much junk food
you consume, it’s never too late to start
undoing the damage caused by a poor diet.

That’s the message from scientists who study how
our food choices affect our life spans and our
risk of developing diseases. They have found that
people can gain sizable health benefits at any age
by cutting back on highly processed foods loaded
with salt, sugar and other additives and replacing
them with more nutritious foods like fruits,
vegetables, nuts, beans, lentils, seafood and
whole grains.

The earlier you start, the better. Following a
healthy diet from a young age leads to the
greatest gains in life expectancy. But even people
who wait until middle age or later to improve
their eating habits still can add years to their
lives.

The research is empowering for several reasons. It
shows that you don’t necessarily have to
transform your diet to gain benefits. Even small
changes, like adding a handful of nuts to your
daily diet as a midday 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, making these relatively small changes to
your diet could still lead to major benefits.

A healthy food boost at any age
In a study in the New England Journal of Medicine,
scientists followed roughly 74,000 people between
the ages of 30 and 75 for over two decades. During
that time, they analyzed their diets and lifestyle
habits and tracked changes in what they ate. The
researchers used several scoring systems to assess
the quality of their diets, including the
Alternate Healthy Eating Index, which was
developed by nutrition experts at the Harvard T.H.
Chan School of Public Health.

The index gives low scores to unhealthy foods and
higher scores to healthier foods. Among the foods
that received high scores were fruits, vegetables,
nuts, seeds, beans, whole grains and foods rich in
unsaturated fats and heart-healthy omega-3 fatty
acids, like 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, such as
sugar-sweetened beverages, pizza, potato chips and
other junk foods.

What are ultra-processed foods? What should I eat
instead?

The more nutritious foods people ate, and the
fewer junk foods they consumed, the higher their
diet scores. The researchers found that people who
had consistently high diet scores were up to 14
percent less likely to die of any cause during the
study period compared to people who had
consistently poor diets.

But perhaps most important: People who improved
their eating habits saw big benefits. The
researchers found that people who increased their
diet scores by just 20 percent during the study
had at least an 8 percent reduction in mortality
during the study period and a 7 to 15 percent drop
in their likelihood of dying from heart disease,
specifically. 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 one handful of nuts or
one serving of beans or lentils daily, said
Mercedes Sotos-Pieto, the lead author of the
study.

She pointed out that most of the participants in
the study were over 60 years old, demonstrating
that it’s never too late to benefit from an
improvement in your eating habits. The reductions
in mortality among people who improved their
eating habits largely stemmed from a decreased
incidence of cardiovascular disease, which is
strongly influenced by diet. Cardiovascular
disease is the leading cause of death worldwide.

Just add nuts, grains, beans and peas
Sotos-Pieto noted that eating a more nutritious
diet by making small and gradual improvements in
your food choices over time can help you lose
weight and lower your cholesterol levels, blood
pressure, blood sugar and inflammation — all of
which can improve your cardiovascular health and
reduce your likelihood of having a heart attack or
stroke.

“It’s not necessary to dramatically change
your lifestyle,” said Sotos-Pieto, an assistant
professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid
and an adjunct professor at Harvard’s School of
Public Health. “Choose small goals that you can
achieve and sustain over time.”

In another study published earlier this year in
PLOS Medicine, scientists analyzed large amounts
of data on the impact that different foods have on
the risk of premature death. Then they used that
data, along with other research on deaths and
chronic disease rates, to estimate how changes in
a person’s diet might influence their life
expectancy at different ages.

The researchers found that a 20-year-old who
switched from the typical Western diet to an
optimal Mediterranean-style diet (and stuck with
it) could add on average 11 to 13 years to his or
her life expectancy. But even seniors could
benefit: A 60-year-old who made this switch could
boost their life expectancy by up to nine years,
and an 80-year-old could gain about
three-and-a-half years.

Start small by eating a handful of nuts daily to
improve your health.(Photo illustration by Linnea
Bullion for The Washington Post)
The study found that the biggest gains in life
expectancy stemmed from eating more legumes such
as beans, peas, lentils and peanuts. If
overhauling your diet seems like a daunting task,
then start small by adding a few particularly
important 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 outsize health benefits you gain from eating
more legumes, nuts and whole grains stems 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, containing large
amounts of fiber, vitamins and minerals.

Legumes for example are high in protein and they
contain several B vitamins, iron, copper,
magnesium, manganese, zinc and phosphorous, he
said. These foods have also been shown in clinical
trials to reduce inflammation and improve
cholesterol levels and other metabolic markers
that affect your life span.

Fadnes emphasized that if you eat a lot of junk
food, the earlier you change your eating habits
the better. Even for people who are overweight,
older and in poor metabolic health, the benefits
you can gain from eating more nutritious foods, he
said, “are likely to be substantial.”

Do you have a question about healthy eating? Email
EatingLab@washpost.com and we may answer your
question in a future column.

Is it time to love food that loves you back?

Hadley Finch

 

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