Dietary changes can add years to life

Dietary changes can add years to life


Do you want to live an extra decade? Then pay more attention to what’s on your dinner plate.

Young adults who eat more beans, peas, nuts and whole grains stand a better chance of outliving those who eat a typical, red meat-based Western diet. So say Norwegian scientists, who studied the effects of dietary variations and changes.

Using data from a global study of disease burdens, the researchers built a model allowing them to instantly estimate the effect of dietary changes on life expectancy.

If you’re young, there’s good news: Changing from a meat-heavy Western diet to optimal eating boosts life expectancy slightly more than a decade in women and almost 13 years in men. So which foods are best? According to the researchers’ model, legumes — which include lentils, peas and beans — offer the largest potential gains in life expectancy at slightly more than two years for both genders. Legumes are followed by whole grains and nuts, respectively, in terms of boosting life expectancy.

The researchers were also able to quantify the effects of eating less-healthy foods. Cutting down on processed and red meats added almost two years of life expectancy among both men and women.

And it’s not just for young people: They found that changing to an optimized diet at ages 60 and 80 also improved life expectancy, albeit more modestly. The gains were about eight years for people in their 60s and about three-and-a-half years for those in their 80s.

Now, the dinner-table approach to potential longevity is simple: Pass the peas, and hold the red meat.

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