Changing Your Diet Could Add Up to a Decade to Life Expectancy, Study Finds

Published:09 Feb.2022 Source:PLOS

Food is fundamental for health and, globally, dietary risk factors are estimated to lead to 11 million deaths and 255 million disability-adjusted life-years annually. In the new study, researchers used existing meta-analyses and data from the Global Burden of Diseases study to build a model that enables the instant estimation of the effect on life expectancy (LE) of a range of dietary changes. The model is also now available as a publicly available online tool called the Food4HealthyLife calculator (https://food4healthylife.org/).

For young adults in the United States, the model estimates that a sustained change from a typical Western diet to the optimal diet beginning at age 20 would increase LE by more than a decade for women (10.7 [uncertainty interval 5.9-14.1] years) and men (13.0 [6.9-17.3] years). The largest gains in years of LE would be made by eating more legumes (females: 2.2 [1.0-3.4]; males: 2.5 [1.1-3.9]), more whole grains (females: 2.0 [0.7-3.3]; males: 2.3 [0.8-3.8]), and more nuts (females: 1.7 [0.8-2.7]; males: 2.0 [1.0-3.0]), less red meat (females: 1.6 [0.7-2.5]; males: 1.9 [0.8-3.0]) and less processed meat (females: 1.6 [0.7-2.5]; males: 1.9 [0.8-3.0]). Changing from a typical diet to the optimized diet at age 60 years could still increase LE by 8.0 (4.8-11.2) years for women and 8.8 (5.2-12.5) years for men, and 80-year-olds could gain 3.4 years (females: 2.1-4.7 and males: 2.1-4.8) from such dietary changes.