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24.05.2022

Dietary diversity increases your life span

A diet rich in vegetables is healthy and can help you reach old age while staying fit and healthy. This nutritional approach becomes even healthier if you diversify your diet as well. In particular, diversifying your vegetables could be effective.

Study
Spanish researchers, affiliated with the Instituto de Investigacion Sanitaria y Biomedica de Alicante, analyzed the data of 1540 participants in the Valencia Nutrition Survey.

When the study started, the participants were 20-97 years. The researchers followed the participants for 18 years. 430 study participants died during that period. Forty percent died as a result of cardiovascular disease.

The researchers knew the diet of the study participants and looked for correlations between participants' diet and their risk of death.

Results
The more diversified the study participants' diets, the less likely they were to die during the 18 years that the study lasted. The researchers discovered that dietary diversity led to a lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease.

When the researchers divided the study participants into 4 equally sized groups [Quartiles] on the basis of the variation in their diet [DDS], they saw that the mortality risk in the group with the second-largest variation [Quartile 3] was lower by 29 percent than that of the group with the least variation. In the group with the greatest variation [Quartile 4], this was 30 percent.

When the Spaniards broke down their data into individual food groups, they found the strongest associations when looking at the effect of a varied vegetable intake.

The table below has been reduced in size. Click on it for a larger version.

Conclusion
"A higher diversity in food intake, particularly in vegetables, may be associated with a lower risk of all-cause and CVD mortality", the Spajaarden summarized the results of their study.

In 2020 we wrote about a Japanese study in which a diversified diet reduced the mortality risk of people over 60. In this study, dietary diversity reduced the risk of deadly cancers.

Source:
Nutrients. 2022 Apr 11;14(8):1583.

More:
More dietary diversity means longevity 27.04.2020
A healthy way of life | It is the sum of life style factors that counts 11.01.2021
Eat mushrooms and live (a bit) longer 06.01.2022

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