Study: Smart eating at 40 leads to better health at 70

If you eat a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and unsaturated fats in middle age, you may be better off later in life, according to a recent study by Harvard researchers.

The study, presented earlier this week at a major nutrition conference, suggests that eating a healthy diet in your 40s can improve the likelihood of maintaining good mental, physical and cognitive health decades later. NBC News report.

That’s because studies show that developing healthy eating habits early in life may reduce the risk of chronic disease and help maintain cognitive function in older age.

Harvard researchers analyzed 30 years of data from more than 106,000 participants in the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study.

The study, which began in 1986, included 70,467 women and 36,464 men who were at least 39 years old and free of chronic disease at the start of the study.

The study asked participants to fill out a detailed food frequency questionnaire every four years from 1986 to 2010, said Anne-Julie Tessier, a nutritionist and research associate at the Harvard School of Public Health and the study’s lead author.

We tracked each participant’s individual diet over time to see how well they matched up with eight nutrient-dense eating patterns.

The diets they compared with the food questionnaire included:

DASH diet

A dietary plan developed by the National Institutes of Health that aims to prevent or lower blood pressure by focusing on vegetables, fruits, and whole grains.

Alternative Healthy Eating Index (AHEI)

This diet encourages eating more beans, nuts, and vegetables and less red and processed meat.

Planetary Health Diet

An eating plan that reduces animal products and emphasizes fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and healthy fats.

Overall, the researchers found that a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, unsaturated fats, nuts, legumes and low-fat dairy products was associated with better healthier aging than a diet high in trans fats, sodium, red meat and processed meat.