20th February 2022

Changing diet can add more than a decade to life expectancy

A new model, available as an online calculator, estimates the impact of dietary changes on life expectancy.

A young adult in the U.S. could add more than a decade to their life expectancy by changing from a typical Western diet to an optimised diet that includes more legumes, whole grains and nuts, and less red and processed meat. That's according to a new study published this month in the journal PLOS Medicine by Professor Lars Fadnes of the University of Bergen, Norway, and colleagues. For older people, the anticipated gains in life expectancy from such dietary changes would be smaller but still substantial.

Eating the right food is fundamental for good health and, globally, dietary risk factors are estimated to result in 11 million deaths and 255 million disability-adjusted life-years annually. For this new study, researchers used existing meta-analyses and data from the Global Burden of Diseases study to build a model that generates an instant estimate of the effect on life expectancy (LE) for a range of dietary changes. The model is now also freely available as a public online tool called the Food4HealthyLife calculator.

For young adults in the United States, the model estimates that a sustained change from a typical Western diet to the optimal diet beginning at age 20 would increase LE by more than a decade for women (10.7 years) and men (13.0 years). The largest gains in years of LE would be made by eating more legumes (females: 2.2; males: 2.5), more whole grains (females: 2.0; males: 2.3), and more nuts (females: 1.7; males: 2.0), less red meat (females: 1.6; males: 1.9) and less processed meat (females: 1.6; males: 1.9). Changing to the optimised diet at age 60 years could still increase LE by 8.0 years for women and 8.8 years for men, while 80-year-olds could gain 3.5 years (females: 3.4; males: 3.5) from such dietary changes.

"Understanding the relative health potential of different food groups could enable people to make feasible and significant health gains. The Food4HealthyLife calculator could be a useful tool for clinicians, policy makers, and lay-people to understand the health impact of dietary choices," the authors say.

Professor Fadnes adds: "Research until now has shown health benefits associated with separate food groups or specific diet patterns but given limited information on the health impact of other diet changes. Our modelling methodology has bridged this gap."

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