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07.07.2017


Meta-analysis: you can reduce your mortality risk by a factor of 5 through your diet

If you eat optimal quantities of healthy types of food - such as beans, fruit, vegetables and nuts - and eliminate from your diet unhealthy categories such as red and processed meat and soft drinks that contain fast sugars, you can reduce your chance of dying by perhaps as much as 80 percent. Researchers at the German Institute of Human Nutrition write about this in an article published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Study
The researchers identified 12 groups of foods of which it is known that they can increase or reduce mortality risk: "whole grains, refined grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts, legumes, eggs, dairy, fish, red meat, processed meat, and sugar-sweetened beverages".

The Germans then tracked down epidemiological studies on the effects of these groups of foods, collated the results and re-analysed them.

There's nothing in the information below about refined grain products, as the researchers found no positive or negative effects of these.

Results
Daily consumption of wholegrain products, fruit, vegetables, fish, beans and nuts reduced mortality risk. Nuts are not included in the figure below, but the consumption of 28 g nuts per day reduced the chance of dying by 15 percent [RR = 0.85].


Meta-analysis: you can reduce your mortality risk by a factor of 5 through your diet


The effect of dairy products was less clear. Consumption of one portion per day slightly reduced the mortality risk, 2-3 portions per day had no effect, and a higher intake increased the mortality risk.


Meta-analysis: you can reduce your mortality risk by a factor of 5 through your diet


Red meat, intensively processed meat products, eggs and soft drinks, with or without added sugar, increased the mortality risk.


Meta-analysis: you can reduce your mortality risk by a factor of 5 through your diet


The researchers then used these data to calculate the total potential effect of an optimally compiled diet - with optimal quantities of the healthy products and as few as possible unhealthy products. The total effect, as the figures below show, was considerable.


Meta-analysis: you can reduce your mortality risk by a factor of 5 through your diet


Conclusion
"An optimal intake of whole grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts, legumes, and fish, as well as reduced consumption of red and processed meats and sugar-sweetened beverages, can lead to an important decrease - by 80 percent - in the relative risk of premature death when compared with intakes always from the highest risk category," the researchers summarised.

"To obtain a complete picture, it seems useful to extend the type of food groups and the clinical end points to be considered. We will in the future develop methods that are able to rank foods and diseases according to their contribution to the prevention of chronic diseases."

Source:
Am J Clin Nutr. 2017 Jun;105(6):1462-73.

More:
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Which diet reduces chance of fatal heart attacks, strokes and cancer? 23.01.2017
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