How long we live is determined by a number of factors. While some of these are beyond our control, such as our genetics, illness and injuries, others can be influenced by our lifestyle choices.
Diet is one such factor, with certain foods purported to help us live longer than others.
Now a new study has found that making healthier dietary choices could actually boost your life expectancy by as much as a decade.
Research, published in Nature Food journal, revealed that shifting to a healthier diet can add a predicted 10 years to the lives of middle-aged people.
As part of the findings, a team from the University of Bergen in Norway, analysed the health data of almost half a million Britons included in the UK Biobank study.
They categorised 467,354 participants based on their eating habits and observed how these changed over time.
The participants were ranked as either “average” and “unhealthy” eaters, or as people with food intake matching the UK’s Eatwell Guide and those whose diet matched what the researchers called the “longevity diet”.
After adjusting for other contributing factors like smoking, physical activity and drinking it was discovered that 40-year-old men and women who switched from an unhealthy diet to a healthier one and were able to stick to it, boosted their life expectancy by nine to 10 years.
Researchers wrote: “Adherence to healthy dietary patterns can prevent the development of non-communicable diseases and affect life expectancy.
“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.
“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.”
It was ruled that the biggest positive difference was seen when people ate more whole grains, nuts and fruits but fewer sugar-sweetened beverages and processed meats.
People who changed from an average diet to healthier eating habits had smaller life expectancy gains, however.
“The bigger the changes made towards healthier dietary patterns, the larger the expected gains in life expectancy are,” the study said.
Changing the diet at a later age also yielded less of a longevity boost but the gains were still substantial.
As an example, the researchers said even 70-year-olds could extend their life expectancy by as much as five years by making a sustained change to their diet.
Researchers say this provides further evidence that governments should help make healthier eating easier for populations.
They added: “Understanding the contribution of sustained dietary changes to life expectancy can provide guidance for the development of health policies.”
Currently the average life expectancy in the UK is around 80 for men and 84 for women.
