What you eat in midlife impacts your health at 70

A new study has found that what people eat in their midlife affects how healthy they are at 70.

Researchers tracked food logs for over 100,000 people over 30 years. Only 10% of participants achieved what researchers called healthy aging, meaning their diets were high in fruit and vegetables, whole grains, unsaturated fats and nuts.

“I think it’s a really interesting study and clearly it comes back to this idea that how we take care of ourselves, how we fuel our bodies, really matters in terms of longevity and just in terms of quality of our lifestyle,” says Dr. Katie Takayasu.

“It’s way too easy right now to choose a snack that’s made from processed ingredients that has more fat, sugar, and more salt in it than something you might make on your own,” says Takayasu.

Takayasu says to keep healthy, people should eat foods such as vegetables, protein and healthy fat that will fuel a body.

She says there are several easy ways to accomplish this including sautéing vegetables in avocado oil, air popping your own popcorn using avocado oil and eating burgers made from 85 to 90% learn ground meat.

Takayasu encourages people to eat the foods they love, but in moderation.

“Pizza is such a great food, isn’t it? It’s so tasty, but it’s that disastrous combination of sugar, salt, and fat. Even though it doesn’t taste sweet, there’s a ton of sugar in the crust because the of processed flours that go into making it. My advice is to have one slice and a lot of salad and veggies alongside.” she says.