Diet of longevity: science revealing how to eat well can add a decade to your life

One of the standard questions posed to centenarians is: “What is your secret?” The answers often revolve around food. For Maria Branyas Morera, who was the oldest person in the world when she died last year at the age of 117, she ate three yogurts a day. Jeanne Calment, officially the oldest person to have ever experienced (although this was disputed), put her incredible stay in olive oil, chocolate and occasional glass of the port.

Of course, what you eat count. The diet has a huge influence on your health and staying healthy is a prerequisite for a long life. But a better question could be: “What did you eat?”

For example, Lars Fadnes at the University of Bergen in Norway and his colleagues recently designed a diet improving longevity, based on their analysis of a huge set of data called the global study of the burden of the disease. This revealed, to no big surprise, that typical Western diets – rich in refined grains, added sugars, red and processed meats and dairy products, and low in whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts and fish – are not optimal for longevity. In fact, they are fatal, responsible for 11 million premature deaths per year.

The researchers have modeled what would happen if people eating this diet permanently passed a healthier person and found a major impact on life expectancy. For example, a 20-year-old woman in the United States can expect to live 80 on a typical diet followed there. But if it radically reduced meat, sugar, dairy products and refined grains and continuously passed to a diet of whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes and fish, its life expectancy would increase to 89 – a gain of almost a decade. A 20 -year -old American man making the same change would also increase his life expectancy, although from a lower starting point from 76 to 86.

“We gain a lot from the increase in whole grains, nuts and legumes, and also reducing sweet foods and meats, transformed and red meats in particular,” explains Fadnes.

And even if your 20th anniversary is a long time ago, there are good reasons to change. A 60 -year -old American woman who makes the change would earn more than an additional seven years, spending her life expectancy from 81.6 to 89. Even an 80 -year -old man wins a few more years.

Fadnes also modeled what would happen if people went to a diet halfway between a west half-chemin diet and the optimal. They have always seen gains in life expectancy, although less.

These are theoretical models – a clinical trial of a diet favorable to longevity would take decades to provide results. But there are real data to support the conclusion of the title that the regime has a significant impact on health later in life.

Last year, Zhaoli Dai-Keller at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and his colleagues dived deeply in the eating habits of thousands of 95-year-old people who still lived in community in Eastern Asia, Australia and Western Europe. By definition, these people had successfully aged and the researchers found that they had won it.

Do not add salt

They were, on the whole, paragones of food virtue. Only a quarter drank alcohol, and they mainly ate a balanced and diversified diet rich in fruits, vegetables, white meat, fish and legumes. Something else also stands out, explains Dai-Keller. “Salt consumption tends to be lower in centenarians,” she says. High consumption of salt is a causal factor in cardiovascular disease, the largest killer in the world.

In a similar study, Anne-Julie Tessier and Marta Guasch-Ferré at the Harvard Th Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, and their colleagues reanalyzed the data of two research projects that followed more than 105,000 people over three decades from 1986, while they progressed from the average age at the start of the age. They were looking for proof of healthy aging, which they defined as reaching 70 without major chronic diseases, as well as physically and mentally clear.

Only about 10% of participants reached this, and when the researchers analyzed what they had in common, they found that the diet was essential. The majority had been held to healthy Mediterranean style dishes throughout the average age. Those who have binded on fatty, salted and fleshy foods, on the other hand, rarely aging healthy.

Reaching 70 in good health is not a guarantee to arrive at 100, of course, but it helps.

However, longevity is not only what you eat, but how much. According to the 2024 study led by DAI-KELLER, one of the decisive characteristics of people aged 95 and over is that they are thin. About half was a normal weight and a third was in weight insufficiency.

Daily weight and operation

Obesity is not a prescription to reach 100, it seems. However, when the researchers examined the ability of their participants to carry out basic daily life activities, they found that being overweight, but not obese, was considerably useful for daily functioning compared to a normal weight. The fact of sub-ponderation has increased the risk of impairment by around 25%.

Which brings us perfectly to one of the methods sometimes recommended for longevity: caloric restriction. One of the most reliable ways to extend the lifespan of laboratory animals is to restrict their favorite caloric contribution of 25% or more. However, it is difficult for people to do so, and the restriction of calories has not yet proven to work in humans – and even if it prolongs life, it could harm the ability to perform daily tasks.

On the whole, however, if you want to give yourself the best chance of living at 100 in the best possible condition, a large slice of secrecy is on your plate.