Meat and Dairy

Do you want to know roughly how much longer you might live if you permanently adopted a healthier diet? The "Food for healthy life" website can give you an idea - and if you're under 60 and eat a typical Western diet, the answer could be around a decade or more on average. The website is based on data from hundreds of studies. "The estimated life extension is mainly due to a reduction in the risk of heart disease, diabetes and cancer," says Lars Fadnes at the University of Bergen in Norway. His team started with recent meta-analyses of the effect of eating various amounts of particular food types, such as fruits. These findings were combined with data on global mortality and what people currently eat to estimate the impact of a permanent change in diet. The highest estimates of lifespan extension are based on a diet designed to maximize the health benefits. This optimized diet involves eating no red or processed meat, drinking no sugar-sweetened beverages, reducing dairy and egg consumption, and eating more legumes, whole grains and nuts.