You don’t have to give up pizza and fries. Nor become a compulsive carrot and broccoli eater. According to a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine , a few adjustments in our daily diet can help us live longer, without turning these into a bore from the point of view of gastronomic pleasure.
We are not talking about drastic changes. According to Mercedes Sotos-Prieto, director of the study and a nutritionist at the University of Athens (Ohio, USA), simple things like changing a daily serving of 120 grams of red meat or 40 grams of processed meat for a handful of nuts or legumes.
The study’s authors, mostly scientists from American universities, analyzed data from 48,000 women between the ages of 30 and 55, and 26,000 men between the ages of 40 and 75. For twelve years, these people responded to periodic questionnaires about their form of sex. eating, and the researchers compared their responses to diets that science has proven helpful in increasing life expectancy.
Among the subjects analyzed, 6,000 women and 4,000 men died during the research period. This made it possible to establish a link between diet and risk of mortality.
The data showed that people who ate a balanced diet based on small changes like those cited above were 9 to 14 percent less likely to die than everyone else. When participants worsened their diet over the estimated twelve years, they had a 6 to 12 percent greater chance of dying from various lifestyle-related illnesses.
According to Sotos-Prieto, it is not necessary to impose a very rigorous diet to live longer and better. We only have to include a high intake of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts and peas, in addition to keeping the consumption of red and processed meats, sweets, soft drinks, refined flours low …
References:
Association of Changes in Diet Quality with Total and Cause-Specific Mortality. (2017). Mercedes Sotos-Prieto, Ph.D., Shilpa N. Bhupathiraju, Ph.D., Josiemer Mattei, Ph.D., MPH, Teresa T. Fung, Sc.D., Yanping Li, Ph.D., An Pan , Ph.D., Walter C. Willett, MD, Dr.PH, Eric B. Rimm, Sc.D., and Frank B. Hu, MD, Ph.D. N Engl J Med 2017; 377: 143-153July 13, 2017DOI: 10.1056 / NEJMoa1613502
