A recipe for living into old age independently

If we want to live a longer life, perhaps we should be letting some of the super-ager superstars influence more of our life choices.

American actor Dick Van Dyke, who will be 100 in December, is still active, engaged, and was dancing on tables in his most recent movie, the Mary Poppins sequel.

He starts every day by eating blueberries.

New York model and fashionista, Iris Apfel found fame in her eighties, gracing magazine covers and runways while being a fixture on the Manhattan fashion scene. Her secret: “I like to eat well, I don’t like rich food and I don’t eat junk food,” she told Into The Gloss.

Studies linking healthy eating to the prevention of chronic diseases like diabetes or heart disease and premature mortality abound.

Less common are studies that link a healthy diet to healthy ageing overall, including the impact of choices you make in mid-life to a longer life spent in good health.

Research published in Nature Medicine in March outlined how eating a diet rich in fruit, vegetables, wholegrains, and unsaturated fats throughout midlife may increase the likelihood of health and wellbeing well into your older years.

Lead author Anne-Julie Tessier, research associate in the Department of Nutrition, at the University of Montreal, said that the study “provides evidence for dietary recommendations to consider not only disease prevention but also promoting overall health ageing as a long-term goal.”

The study defined healthy aging as living to at least 70 years old, being free of chronic disease, and maintaining a good cognitive function, mental health, and physical function.

To examine the link between healthy ageing and diet, the researchers used data from the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study and the Nurses’ Health Study on the eating habits and health outcomes of more than 106,000 men and women.

Participants, who were at least 39 years old and had no chronic diseases at the start of the study, reported on their diets every four years from 1986 to 2010.

The researchers assessed each participant’s adherence to eight different healthy dietary patterns, including the Mediterranean Diet, Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet, the planetary health diet, and the alternative healthy eating index, which is the diet most closely aligned to US dietary guidelines.

While each diet is different, all emphasise a high intake of fruits, vegetables, wholegrains, unsaturated fats, nuts, legumes, and low-fat dairy.

The researchers also looked at consumption of ultra-processed foods – typically containing additives, flavourings, unhealthy fats, and emulsifiers.

They found that by 2016, nearly half of the participants had died and only one in ten (9,800 people) had aged healthfully, free of major chronic disease, and had positive measures of cognitive, physical, and mental health.

Those who had adhered most closely to a healthy dietary pattern had between a 43% and 84% greater chance of ageing well. Participants with the highest intakes of trans fats, salt, meat, especially red and processed meats, and sugary drinks aged least well. Specifically, those who ate more ultra-processed foods had their chances of healthy ageing reduced by a third (32%).

Lead author Dr Frank Hu, of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, summed up the results of the study.

“Studies have previously investigated dietary patterns in the context of specific diseases or how long people live. Ours takes a multi-faceted view, asking, how does diet impact people’s ability to live independently and enjoy a good quality of life as they age?”

Another recent study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine suggested that people who eat lots of ultra-processed foods may be at increased risk of dying early. The study involved participants from eight countries, including the UK and the U.S.

The report estimates that in the UK and the US, where ultra-processed foods for more than half the calorie intake, 14% of early deaths could be linked to the harms they cause.

If you are still in doubt about what exactly an ultra-processed food is, consider any food that typically has one or more ingredients that you never or rarely find in a kitchen, generally with a long shelf life. The list includes processed ham, sausages, mass-produced bread, breakfast cereals, instant soups, ice-cream, crisps, biscuits, fruit-flavoured yogurt, and fizzy drinks.

How many of those items do you typically include in your daily diet?

Because many of these items often contain high levels of saturated fat, salt and sugar, when we eat them we have less room in our diets for more nutritious foods. It has been suggested that the additives in these foods could be responsible for negative health effects, although the evidence for this is less clear-cut.

Another theory is that diets higher in ultraprocessed foods could also affect our gut health.

More research is needed to separate out these different elements and understand exactly what it is about ultra-processed foods that is causing them to impact our ability to live into our elder years in full health. Is it one of these elements, or is it a combination?

Currently, it is hard to be sure whether it is something within ultra-processed foods that is the issue, or whether eating a diet high in these foods suggests an overall lifestyle that is linked to poorer health.

However, we do know that many ultra-processed foods are high in salt, sugar, and saturated fat content. We also know the huge benefits come from diets bursting with fruit, vegetables, wholegrains, unsaturated fats, legumes and low-fat dairy.

With that in mind, the latest evidence suggests that cutting down on the amount of ultra-processed foods we eat on a daily basis seems like a recipe for living to an independent, ripe old age. Maybe even dancing on tables.