2023-11-29 10:00:55
at Silvia Turin
Even at 70 years of age you can add years of life lived in health. The worst food choices in this sense were sugary drinks and processed meats, while whole grains and dried fruit were the best.
It’s never too late. Changing your eating habits in a healthy way can save you years of life. And quite a few.
10 years of life: here’s how
This was established by research published in the magazine Nature Food, conducted by a team from the University of Bergen, in Norway, based however on data from a large English population present in the Biobank archive: around half a million volunteers aged between 40 and 69. People were grouped according to different eating patterns (five) and observations tracked how these changed over the years.
Analyzes conducted on eating habits have shown that changing one’s diet at age 40 from unhealthy eating patterns to patterns associated with longevity (such as the Mediterranean diet) is associated with an increase in life expectancy of 10.8 years for men and 10 .4 years in women (see graph below, ed.).
In the same population, the change towards the Eatwell dietary model (the one officially proposed by Public Health England and the United Kingdom Government for a healthy diet) increases life expectancy for 40-year-old males and females by 8.9 and 8.6 years .
Even 70-year-olds are right to change course
And, as written, it is never too late: if at 70 you change to a healthy diet (from an unhealthy one) you gain 5.4 years for women and 5.0 years for men; Moving on to Eatwell’s guidelines they are 4.4 years and 4.0 years for women and men. Overall, the greater and earlier the changes made in favor of healthier eating patterns, the greater the years gained in terms of life expectancy.
The UK population currently has a life expectancy at birth of 83.6 years for females and 79.9 years for males.
Best choices are whole grains and dried fruit
The researchers also established which food groups are typically associated with higher mortality and vice versa (greater longevity): the worst choices according to this study are sugary drinks and processed meat, while the best are whole grains and dried fruit.
It was known that greater adherence to healthy dietary recommendations is associated with reduced mortality, but it was not known how sustained improvements in dietary patterns translated into increased life expectancy at different stages of life.
This study may provide a stimulus for lasting change, as other research shows that less than 0.1% of the UK population adheres to all of the Eatwell Guide recommendations, which are very similar to those of the Mediterranean diet.
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November 29, 2023 (modified November 29, 2023 | 07:56)
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