Monday, September 09, 2024

Bow Ral - Not Chasing High Income - How to eat for a long and healthy life

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How to eat for a long and healthy life

The length and quality of your life will be determined in part by your genetics. But how you live your life is important, too.

If hit podcasts, bestselling books and influencer culture are any indication, millions of people are obsessed with longevity.
But just as important as your life span is your health span, or the number of years you live in good health, said Susan Roberts, the senior associate dean for research at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth.






The length and quality of your life will be determined in part by your genetics, she said. But how you live your lifeis important, too, including how much you exercise and sleep, whether you drink excessively or smoke — and how you eat, Dr. Roberts said.
Eating for longevity isn’t an exact science, of course. It’s unrealistic, and possibly unethical, for researchers to ask people to faithfully follow various diets for decades and then see how their lives turn out, said Dr. Frank Hu, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

But researchers can look for associations between people’s dietary habits and their long-term health, he said.
Here are the best clues we have for how to eat for a long and healthy life.
Research suggests that those who consume more protein tend to live longer and stay stronger and healthier later in life than those who consume less.
But where you get your protein matters. Plant-based sources like legumes, nuts and whole grains seem to be especially beneficial, whereas protein from red and processed meat has been linked with shorter lives, Dr. Lars Fadnes, a professor of global public health at the University of Bergen in Norway, wrote in an email.
Protein is key to maintaining strong muscles and bones, which can help older adults stay active and avoid falls and fractures, said Denise K. Houston, a professor of gerontology and geriatric medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
Dr. Houston and other experts have recommended that those 65 and older consume at least 0.45 to 0.54 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day. For a 150-pound adult, this translates to about 68 to 81 grams of protein. To help your body better absorb and use protein, try to distribute it across meals throughout the day, Dr. Houston said.
In addition to protein, be sure to get enough calcium and vitamin D to support your bone health as you age, Dr. Roberts said.
Dairy milk, as well as fortified plant milks, orange juices and cereals, can be good sources of both nutrients. You can also find calcium in yogurt, cheese, tofu, beans and leafy green vegetables. Much of your vitamin D can come from exposure to sunlight, but foods like fish, mushrooms and eggs provide additional amounts.
It’s best to get calcium from foods if you can, Dr. Houston said. But if you’re falling short on either nutrient, talk with your doctor about whether supplements are right for you.
Fruits, vegetables, whole grains and other plant foods, like nuts and legumes, are rich in polyphenols — antioxidant and anti-inflammatory compounds that some research suggests can support healthy aging.
Coffee, for example, is a major source of polyphenols. Drinking as much as three to five cups per day has been linked with reduced risks for Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, some cancers, Parkinson’s disease, cognitive decline and earlier death, Dr. Hu said. Green tea may have similar benefits, he added, though the research is less robust.

Researchers have also linked other polyphenol-rich foods like berries, dark leafy green vegetables, avocados and extra virgin olive oil to health benefits, including a longer life and improved brain health.
Diets that are high in unsaturated fats, found in olive oil and most other plant oils, nuts, seeds, and avocados, have been linked with lower mortality, Dr. Hu and his colleagues have found. Alternatively, diets that are rich in saturated fats, which are found in red and processed meats, seem to have the opposite effect.
Ultraprocessed foods — which include many packaged products like hot dogs, chicken nuggets, sodas and many baked goods — are increasingly linked with greater risks for health conditions like heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, dementia and a shortened life span.
In one study published in 2023, researchers found that processed meats and sugar-sweetened beverages like soda were strongly associated with earlier death — so those categories are important to limit for improved life expectancy, Dr. Fadnes said.
Ultraprocessed foods are often high in “fast carbohydrates,” Dr. Hu said, which are quickly digested and can lead to blood sugar spikes. Over time, those spikes may increase the risk for Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, he said. Many ultraprocessed foods are also often high in sodium, which can contribute to high blood pressure, Dr. Houston said.

Consider the big picture.

More than any one food, it’s your overall diet that matters, Dr. Hu said. He has studied several different eating patterns — including the Mediterranean diet, plant-based diets and diets based on federal guidelines for healthy eating — and has found that all of them are associated with reduced risks of earlier death.
These diets prioritize a variety of unprocessed or minimally processed foods, including plenty of vegetables, whole grains, nuts and legumes, Dr. Hu said. Beyond that, he added, there’s a lot of flexibility in how to eat for healthy aging. “One size does not fit all,” he added.

Dr. Hu, for example, has long followed what he calls a traditional Asian diet, regularly consuming tofu, seaweed and green tea. But because he recognizes the benefits of the Mediterranean diet, he also uses extra virgin olive oil. And he enjoys his coffee, too.

Alice Callahan is a Times reporter covering nutrition and health. She has a Ph.D. in nutrition from the University of California, Davis. More about Alice Callahan


A Guide to Better Nutrition

  • Understanding why ultraprocessed foods, linked to poor health, are so easy to overeat might be key to making them less harmful, some researchers say.
  • Whatever your food goals, you’re bound to find at least a few morsels of wisdom in some of our favorite nutrition articles of 2024. Here are 10 important nutrition takeaways from the year, so far.
  • Is fish oil helpful or harmful for the heart? Here’s where the evidence stands.
  • Avocados are great on toast, salads and burgers, or just sprinkled with salt. Plus, they’re healthy — but how healthy?
  • Calorie restriction and intermittent fasting both increase longevity in animals, aging experts say. Here’s what that means for you.
  • Sodium is everywhere in our diets. But how much salt is too much?


    Dispensing with the perfect life pretence of a rushed clear-up makes for better social events, better friendships and a better life
    Jack King, an Anglican priest from Tennessee, coined the phrase “scruffy hospitality” a decade ago. He and his wife enjoyed hosting friends for dinner, and had a standard checklist they’d run through in the days and hours before guests were due to arrive: “Select a menu, complete grocery shopping, mow the lawn, sweep the floors, run the vacuum, clean the playroom . . . set the table, clean the playroom (again) . . . ” 
    Powering through the list certainly made their home more inviting to visitors. But it also dissuaded them from inviting more visitors, because it was so much work. Besides, King started to wonder, wasn’t there something odd about putting so much effort into hiding the daily reality of their lives from the people they called their friends? And so the couple made a decision: they would start inviting friends to dine in their home as it was, and on whatever happened to be in the kitchen cupboards. As King put it later in a sermon: “Scruffy hospitality means you hunger more for good conversation and serving a simple meal of what you have [than] in the impression your home or lawn makes.”
    Arguably, the idea was ahead of its time: it’s surely right now, in our ever more virtualised, work-from-home world, that we need all the help we can get to lower the psychological barriers that stand in the way of real-life socialising. 
    As a concept, “scruffy hospitality” would be valuable enough if all it conveyed was permission to put a little less effort into keeping a pristine home. But King was on to something deeper. Being willing to let others see the reality of your life isn’t merely forgivable; I’m convinced it makes for better social events, better friendships and a better life.
    Even before encountering King’s work, I’d observed a strange contradiction in my own attitude to household mess. If I noticed, say, crumbs underneath our fridge, or mail stacked inexplicably on top of our toaster, in the hours before guests arrived, I’d hurry to tidy things up. If I discovered an unflushed toilet — which I regret to say can happen, in homes with small kids — I’d breathe a sigh of relief that I’d discovered such a disastrous oversight in time. 
    Yet if I noticed crumbs or stray letters while visiting friends, I’d feel obscurely privileged, as if I’d been granted a VIP access pass to their lives — and so we really must be friends. Even an unflushed toilet would elicit no judgment from me. Why would it? Life happens. And most of us are much more instinctively generous about acknowledging it with our friends than we are with ourselves.
    To put on an impressive show for visitors is to erect a facade, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that; some of us love the challenge of creating the most enchanting one we can. But any notion that such a facade is mandatory, before visitors are to be admitted to your life, must arise from the assumption that there’s something incomplete or inadequate about your life the rest of the time. Since your visitors’ home is presumably likewise usually a mess, it might even imply there’s something wrong with their lives, too. No wonder calling off the whole performance can forge a deeper bond. The moment I first see a friend’s chaotic kitchen is like the moment in a blooper reel when two actors can’t help breaking character and collapsing in laughter. Officially, it shouldn’t be happening — but it always feels delightfully real when it does.
    The virtues of letting facades crumble aren’t confined to dinner parties, either. The writer David Zahl refers to the broader worldview in which we approach each other in the assumption that everyone is imperfect and struggling as a “low anthropology”. It’s the opposite of a “high anthropology”, in which we focus optimistically on the great things we expect from others and ourselves — yet which all too often leads to anxiety, judgment, resentment and burnout. “A high anthropology views people as defined by their best days and greatest achievements,” Zahl writes, whereas a low anthropology “assumes a throughline of heartache and self-doubt . . . [and] that the bulk of our mental energy is focused on subjects that would be embarrassing or even shameful if broadcast.” 
    Calling off the performance is a lot to ask, of course, in a world in which we’re so often evaluated on our surface appearances. And I’m open to the objection that embracing scruffy hospitality may be rather more socially acceptable for men than for women. Still, it seems a worthy and a liberating goal to which to aspire. It acknowledges what we all know anyway to be true — that any impression of flawless competence we may sometimes manage to project is really just an illusion. It invites us to find joy in the awareness of our shared imperfect predicament. And it points towards a vision of life as, metaphorically speaking, one extended scruffy dinner party — in which we’re all cooking for each other, and nobody’s pretending it’s anything fancier than spaghetti with tomato sauce, and the lack of pretence is exactly what makes it feel so convivial and full of life. 
    Oliver Burkeman’s latest book is ‘Meditations for Mortals: Four weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts’ (Bodley Head)


 


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