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Changing to a healthier diet can add almost a decade to life for middle-aged people, according to a new study.
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The research — published in the journal, Nature Food — looked at the health data of 500,000 British residents whose eating habits have been documented as part of a U.K. biobank study.
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Participants were labelled as either average and unhealthy eaters, people with a diet matching the U.K.’s Eatwell Guide, and those consuming what researchers called the “longevity diet.”
Researchers said the longest gains in life expectancy were made by those who consumed more whole grains, nuts and fruits and less sugar-sweetened beverages and processed meats.
The U.K. population has a life expectancy of about 84 years for women and 80 years for men.
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Adjusting for other factors like smoking, alcohol, and physical activity, the study found that 40-year-old men and women who ate healthier food, and stuck to it, gained almost nine to 10 years in life expectancy.
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“Here, using a prospective population-based cohort data from the UK Biobank, we show 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,” scientists, including those from the University of Bergen in Norway, wrote.
“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,” they added.
“The bigger the changes made towards healthier dietary patterns, the larger the expected gains in life expectancy are,” researchers explained.
Researchers say the life expectancy gains seemed to be lower when the diet change was at older ages.
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