Study links sustained dietary patterns to life expectancy gains

A new study from the UK which showed that adherence to healthy dietary patterns can prevent the development of non-communicable diseases and improve life expectancy is applicable to a substantial part of the world. Prospective population-based cohort data from the UK Biobank, proved that sustained dietary change from unhealthy dietary patterns to the Eatwell Guide dietary recommendations is associated with 8.9 and 8.6 years gain in life expectancy for 40-year-old males and females, respectively, Nature Food reported.
In the same population, sustained dietary change from unhealthy to longevity-associated dietary patterns is associated with 10.8 and 10.4 years gain in life expectancy in males and females, respectively.
The results showed that the longevity-associated dietary pattern had moderate intakes of whole grains, fruit, fish and white meat; a high intake of milk and dairy, vegetables, nuts and legumes; a relatively low intake of eggs, red meat and sugar-sweetened beverages; and a low intake of refined grains and processed meat. Analyses adjusting also for body mass index and energy showed slight reductions in inverse associations with mortality for whole grains, vegetables and fruits, reductions in positive associations with mortality for red meat, and stronger inverse associations for both nuts and white meat.
For several of the food groups associated with reduced mortality, the lowest intake quintiles were substantially different from the other quintiles. The unhealthy dietary pattern (that is, the quintile with the highest mortality associations) contained no or limited amounts of whole grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts, legumes, fish, milk and dairy, and white meat and substantial intakes of processed meat, eggs, refined grains and sugar-sweetened beverages. The strongest positive associations with mortality were for sugar-sweetened beverages and processed meat, while the strongest inverse associations with mortality were for whole grains and nuts.
The team, led by Lars Fadnes, a public health researcher at the University of Bergen in Norway, modelled life expectancy for some 467,354 people who documented their eating habits as part of the long-running UK Biobank study, which started in 2006. The participants were grouped based on their eating patterns, and noted how they shifted over time. They identified average and unhealthy eaters, as well as people whose food intake matched the Eatwell Guide and others who consumed a diet the researchers dubbed the longevity diet.
“The bigger the changes made towards healthier dietary patterns, the larger the expected gains in life expectancy are,” the team explains in their published paper. “Unsurprisingly, predicted gains in life expectancy are lower when the dietary change is initiated at older ages, but these remain substantial.” People aged 70 years old could still extend their life expectancy by around 4 to 5 years if they made a sustained change to eating healthily, either in accordance with the Eatwell Guide or the ‘longevity diet’, the researchers found.
While this new analysis looks at the UK, expanding the geographical range of such studies, the same caveats apply as with any population-level data. For example, the UK Biobank doesn’t measure consumption of rice, which is particularly important for many migrant groups, so the results won’t generalise to everyone. The pool of data in the UK Biobank also predominantly describes people of a White European, middle- to upper-class socioeconomic background. Improving food environments in schools and workplaces by removing vending machines and offering healthier options could also make a real difference to people’s health – not to mention the planet.