An article published in the prestigious “Nature” magazine presents the conclusions of a study – which included over 100,000 people and has been carried out over 30 years – regarding the connection between the most popular healthy diets and aging.
The Mediterranean diet is not the healthiest. Photo: Shutterstock
A reference study published in “Nature Medicine” presents the conclusions of an analysis that lasted 30 years on healthy aging and aging.
The study watched 105,015 people in the US for 30 years, and revealed that only 9.3% obtained a “healthy aging”.
Healthy aging has been defined as survival up to the age of 70 without the presence of 11 major chronic diseases and without affecting cognitive function, physical function or mental health. Participants who did not meet the criteria or who died before 2016 were considered as people who normally aged.
The most popular healthy diets
Participants joined one of the eight healthy diet or followed an unhealthy diet rich in ultra -processing foods. These regimes include the Mediterranean, the herbal diet, the diet for stopping hypertension, the empirical inflammatory food and others.
While all healthy eating models have similarities, such as promoting an in whole input, vegetables and grains, while reducing the amount of red and processed meat, each model emphasizes specific components.
For example, while the AMED (alternative index for the Mediterranean diet) focuses on Mediterranean foods – olive oil, fish and nuts, Mind diet (combines Mediterranean diet with DASH diet) underlines the cognitive benefits of berries.
The DASH diet gives priority to the restriction of sodium consumption for blood pressure control. The PHDI diet (the index of the healthy planetary diet) underlines the importance of healthy foods with low greenhouse gas emissions, such as protein foods of plant origin, and the HPDI diet attributes a positive score to healthy herbal foods and negative foods of animal origin.
The close adhesion to all the eight healthy food models has been strongly associated with a greater probability of healthy aging.
Among them, the best predictor of healthy aging was the use of the alternate healthy eating index (AHEI), a food score developed by researchers at Harvard University, Public Health Faculty.
“The higher intake of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, unsaturated fats, nuts, legumes and low -fat dairy products have been associated with higher chances of healthy aging, while higher consumption of trans fats, sodium, sweet drinks and red or processed (or both) were associated.”, The researchers concluded.
ascertainment “It suggests that foods rich in vegetable foods, with the moderate inclusion of healthy foods of animal origin, can help with healthy general aging, guiding future food orientations.“
The healthiest diet according to Harvard researchers. Photo: Harvard
The healthiest diet does not exclude meat
The alternate healthy eating index (AHEI), developed by Harvard researchers, is an index of food quality that assigns scores depending on their ability to prevent chronic diseases, higher scores indicating a better diet.
Ahei aims to evaluate and promote food models associated with low risk of chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes, heart attacks and stroke.
The Ahei score was calculated based on the contribution of 11 foods and nutrients that were positively or negatively associated with the risk of chronic diseases, including fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes, alcohol, red and processed, whole grains, sodium, trans fats and N-3 fatty acids (Omega-3) with long chain.
Each component was punctuated on a scale from 0 to 10, and Ahei varied from 0 to 110, a higher score indicating a better general quality of the diet.
Ahei emphasizes the importance of consuming a variety of vegetables, especially leafy greens. As for the fruits, the goal is four portions daily. It recommends the consumption of whole grains, nuts, vegetable proteins such as tofu, consumption of fish and healthy fats such as olive oil.
Ahei suggests avoiding potatoes, refined cereals, fruit juices and saturated fats.
Studies have shown that people who score higher in Ahei have a lower risk of chronic diseases, including coronary heart disease, diabetes and mortality for all causes.
