You can reduce your risk of premature death by nearly 20% just by eating more foods from four healthy eating patterns, according to researchers who analyzed decades of data collected on more than 119,000 adults.
The study, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, found that people who ate the “highest quality diets” had a 20% lower risk of dying early from cancer, cardiovascular disease, and respiratory and neurodegenerative diseases during the study.
Notably, researchers found the link between healthy eaters and lower risk of death across different racial and ethnic groups, including Hispanic individuals, non-Hispanic blacks, and non-Hispanic whites.
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The “highest quality diets” included the four dietary pattern indices (Healthy Eating Index 2015, Mediterranean Diet Alternative, Healthy Plant-Based Diet Index, and Healthy Alternative Eating Index).
The new study, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, found that people who ate the “highest quality diets” had a 20% lower risk of dying early from certain diseases.
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All share key components, including whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes, although other components differ in different dietary patterns.
“Our findings support the recommendations of the DGAs [Dietary Guidelines for Americans] for multiple healthy eating patterns for all US individuals with diverse personal and cultural food traditions and preferences,” concluded corresponding author Frank B. Hu, MD, of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts.
Various vegetables and colorful beans — top view. All participants were free of cardiovascular disease or cancer at baseline.
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The researchers used health data collected over 36 years in two long-term studies. The first examined 75,230 women from the Nurses’ Health Study (1984-2020) and the second examined 44,085 men from the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (1986-2020).
All participants were free of cardiovascular disease or cancer at baseline.
A recommended diet is the Mediterranean diet, which emphasizes eating fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, legumes, fish and a lot of olive oil.
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Between the two study groups, food frequency questionnaires were completed every four years (starting in 1984 for the NHS and 1986 for the HPFS), allowing researchers to determine how well 75,230 women and 44,085 men in the two studies adhered to a of the four healthy eating patterns: the 2015 Healthy Eating Index (HEI-2015), the Mediterranean Diet Alternative Score (AMED), the Healthy Plant Diet Index (HPDI), and the Alternative Healthy Eating Index (AHEI).
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The researcher ranked the participants on how well they followed four healthy eating styles that are in sync with current US dietary guidelines, and used the participants’ death records to determine any associations with dietary patterns.
People are often bored with one way of eating, Hu explained, “so this is good news. It means that we have a lot of flexibility in terms of creating our own healthy eating patterns that can be tailored to individual food preferences, health conditions and cultures.
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“For example, if you’re eating healthy Mediterranean and after a few months you want to try something different, you can switch to a DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet, or you can switch to a semi-vegetarian diet,” Hu said.
“Or you can follow US dietary guidelines and create your own healthy eating plate.”
The results were published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.
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