Switching to a healthy diet — and sticking to it — can add nearly a decade to middle-aged people, a new study finds.
The study was published earlier this week in the journal Natural foodIt reviewed the health data of nearly half a million British residents whose dietary habits were recorded as part of the UK Biobank study.
Researchers gathered 467,354 participants on their eating habits and looked at how they changed over time.
The participants were classified as either average or unhealthy eaters, or people with a food intake that matched the UK Eatwell guidelines and whose diet conformed to what the researchers called a “longevity diet”.
Currently, the UK population has a life expectancy at birth of 84 years for women and 80 years for men.
Adjusting for other contributing factors, such as smoking, alcohol and exercise, the study found that 40-year-old men and women who switched from an unhealthy diet to a healthy diet gained nearly 9 to 10 years in their lives. keep out.
Here, using population-based cohort data from the UK Biobank, we show that persistent dietary change from unhealthy eating patterns to Eatwell Guide dietary recommendations is associated with 8.9 and 8.6 years of life expectancy in 40-year-old men. Women, including scientists from the University of Bergen in Norway, wrote in the order.
“In the same population, a sustained change in diet from a healthy to a longer life diet was associated with an increase in life expectancy of 10.8 and 10.4 years in men and women, respectively,” he said.
Researchers found that the biggest gains in life expectancy came from changing diets to eat more whole grains, nuts and fruits and less sugary drinks and processed meats.
Those who initially followed an average diet and later changed to healthier eating habits had a shorter life expectancy.
“The larger the changes in healthy eating patterns, the greater the expected gains in life expectancy,” the researchers said.
Life expectancy appears to be lower when dietary changes are started in older age, but even these are higher, scientists say.
For example, even 70-year-olds say they can extend their lifespan by 4 or 5 years if they make consistent dietary changes.
Recent findings point to government measures such as a health-focused food tax, improving food environments in schools and workplaces, and subsidies to help reduce the cost of healthy foods in the UK, which could contribute to improving people’s health.
“Such policy measures informed by current estimates of life expectancy that we present in this paper may guide the deployment of resources to improve healthy dietary patterns in the population,” the researchers added.