A new study revealed that eating healthy is so important for your health that even small changes in your diet could improve your life expectancy. According to the study, even 20-percetile increase in diet scores resulted in 8 to 17 % reduction of that person’s death risk over a period of 12 years.
The findings published in The New England Journal of Medicine explained that 20-percentile increase means an increase of 22 points from a total of 110 points used at the objective diet scores for the study.
How can you achieve that?
By taking baby stepts, your changes do not have to be dramatic. For example they advice swapping one serving of meat (4 ounces of red meant and 1.5 ounces of processed meat) with a serving of legumes or nuts in order to change your diet. According to assistant professor at Ohio University, Mercedes Sotos-Prieto, the lead of the study, this kind of small changes can really help on the long run.
The findings of the study are complemented by plenty of other research showing a definite connection between higher died quality cores and a lower death risk (17-26%).
On the contrary to making a healthy change, the study also revealed that when the subject’s diet worsened, the subject increased its death percentage with 6-12 % over a 12 years span.
The study was massive, 48,000 female subjects (ages 30 to 55) and 26,000 male subjects (40 to 75) were used. It is important to state that all the participants were involved in two long running studies of chronic diseases. The female participants were enrolled in the Nurse’s Health Study, while the male participants were enrolled the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study.
The conclusion is that it is essential for everyone to remember eating more fruits, whole grains, vegetables and making small changes in their diet.