How to eat to reduce the risk of death

One of the great decisions we all make for the New Year is healthy eating. There are those who do it to lose weight and those who are just looking for Improve your health. This should be the main goal. After all, everything else comes later. But how do we choose healthy eating better? There are many options, from those wonderful diets that can be dangerous to wholesome eating patterns. There are so many tips that sometimes we can drown in them, not knowing which option is best. And it is for this reason that an international team of scientists conducted a study aimed at analyzing the best healthy eating patterns that we can adhere to when it comes to choose our diet

In other words, they did not analyze specific diets, but ways to evaluate them. Thus, they confirmed that people who base their healthy diet on four sets of patternssuffer less andcardiovascular and respiratory disease or cancer. In addition, the risk early death.

The findings about healthy eating may seem self-evident, but at least they give an idea of ​​what the best recommendations for healthy eating are. This is not the first study of its kind, but one of the most comprehensive, so it is interesting to take it into account.

The ideal healthy diet

To design this study, eating habits 119,315 people, all over 36. After that, they were evaluated based on various healthy eating patterns to see which ones were the most effective in getting results. Thus, it was seen that there are four specifically with which the results were much more positive.

In fact, they can all be boiled down to the importance of having enough whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes. However, there may be slight deviations in its measurement, so let’s see how each of them is determined. nutritional schemes for a healthy diet.

Healthy eating index

The Healthy Eating Index is perhaps the most widely used in United States of Americaas it evaluates a person’s diet based on their greater or lesser adherence to guidelines Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA). In fact, it was developed by the Department of Agriculture and the National Cancer Institute of this country.

All food groups are evaluated from 0 to 100, based on adherence to the recommended guidelines. These guidelines have been prepared to minimize the risk of suffering cardiometabolic disease or cancer, among other conditions. Therefore, the higher the commitment, the lower the risk. In terms of included groups, there are 13 ingredients in total: 2 for fruits, 2 for vegetables and legumes, whole grains, dairy products, protein products, vegetable and fish proteins, fatty acids, whole grains, sodium, added sugars. and saturated fats.

For the last two, it is estimated that “they should provide less than 10% of consumed energyawarding maximum points for these components in the case of added sugars if they represent less than 6.5% of the energy (10 points) and 8% in the case of saturated fatty acids (10 points).”

Alternative Mediterranean Diet

Speaking of healthy eating, one cannot but recall the Mediterranean diet. That is, one that is based on the healthy diet of people living in the Mediterranean. We are talking about traditional patternsbecause we must not forget that in this region too, the current pace of life has increased the consumption of ultra-processed foods that are very high in sugars or saturated fats.

Therefore, in fact, a healthy diet closer to the mediterranean dietthe higher his share healthy fats, fruits, vegetables and whole grainsbut less than red meat, processed meats and refined carbohydrates.

It should be noted that all this applies to the Mediterranean diet. When we talk about the alternative Mediterranean diet, we are actually counting the proportion of these food groups in order to achieve a healthy diet that resembles the diet of these regions.

Brooke Lark (Unsplash)

Plant Based Healthy Diet Index

Obviously, a plant-based diet does not include animal products. But eating plants is not enough for a healthy diet. There are many plant foods that contribute to poor health. For example, French fries or fruit juices.

For this reason, a plant-based healthy eating index has been established, which gives the highest scores to healthy plant-based foods, such as whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes, oils, tea and coffee. Conversely, other products such as refined grains, juices, sugary drinks or sweetshave much lower scores.

Alternative healthy eating index

Finally, this index takes a person’s diet and rates it from 0 to 10, depending on likelihood of developing cardiometabolic diseaseswhere 0 is the minimum risk and 10 is the maximum.

So, for example, if someone eats five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, they will score 0 in that food group. If, on the contrary, he never eats vegetables, he will have 10 points. In contrast, when evaluating sugary drinks, punctuation is reversed. If you never take them, you will have 0, and if you take them very often, you can go up to 10.

Eleven food groups are evaluated, so that you can get from 0 to 110. This is perhaps one of the most intuitive templates for assessing a person’s diet. But in general, it seems that any of the four is suitable if we want to take care of what we eat. In any case, if we do not know where to start, the best option is to always look for a nutritionist to help us. learn to eat healthy. Because, after all, that’s the goal. It’s not about diet, it’s about always eating the healthiest food possible and putting aside regret if one day we lose those points. You must take care of your physical health, but also your mental health.