According to study, eating a balanced diet can add ten years to your life.

• According to new studies, adopting a nutritious diet can extend the longevity of young adults by up to ten years.
  
• To quantify the influence on lifespan, they designed a "ideal diet" consisting of legumes, whole grains, nuts, and less red meat.
• Researchers also devised a 'feasibility approach diet,' which is a'middle ground' between a conventional Western diet and an optimum one while still improving life expectancy.

Everyone desires to live a longer life. And we're often advised that making healthy lifestyle choices, such as exercising, quitting smoking, and not drinking too much alcohol, is the key to achieving this. Diet has also been proved to extend life span in studies.

According to a new study, eating healthy can prolong lifespan by six to seven years in middle-aged persons and by roughly ten years in young ones.

The researchers combined data from a number of studies on nutrition and longevity with data from the Global Burden of Disease Study, which compiles information on population health in a variety of nations. The authors were able to predict how life expectancy altered with changes in intake of fruit, vegetables, whole grains, refined grains, nuts, legumes, fish, eggs, dairy, red meat, processed meat, and sugary drinks after combining this data.

The authors were thus able to create an ideal diet for longevity, which they contrasted to the standard western diet, which consists primarily of processed meals, red meat, high-fat dairy products, high-sugar foods, pre-packaged foods, and a low intake of fruits and vegetables. More legumes (beans, peas, and lentils), whole grains (oats, barley, and brown rice), and nuts, as well as less red and processed meat, were found to be beneficial in their study.

For women and men from the United States, China, and Europe, consuming an ideal diet starting at age 20 increased life expectancy by more than a decade. They also discovered that switching from a western to an optimum diet at the age of 60 would add eight years to one's life expectancy. Life expectancy for 80-year-olds might improve by about three and a half years.

However, because it is not always possible for people to entirely shift their diet, the researchers assessed what would happen if people switched from a western diet to a diet that was midway between the optimal and usual western diet. They discovered that even a "feasibility approach diet" might boost life expectancy for 20-year-olds by just over six years for women and just over seven years for men.

These findings suggest that implementing long-term dietary adjustments at any age can have a significant impact on life expectancy. However, the benefits are greatest if these modifications are made early in life.

Is there a whole picture?

The study's life expectancy predictions are based on the most recent and comprehensive meta-analyses (studies that aggregate the findings of many scientific studies) on nutrition and mortality.

While meta-analyses provide the greatest evidence in many circumstances due to the volume of data analysed, they still generate assumptions with the data, which may lead to major distinctions across studies being overlooked. It's also worth noting that the evidence for limiting egg and white meat intake was of poorer quality than that for whole grains, salmon, processed meats, and nuts.

There are a few aspects of the study that were overlooked. First, patients have to make dietary modifications over a ten-year period to notice these effects. This means it's unclear if people who make dietary changes over a longer period of time will see a gain in their lifespan. The study also didn't account for previous health issues, which might decrease life expectancy. This means that the benefits of nutrition on life expectancy are simply averages and may vary depending on a variety of other factors such as chronic health conditions, genetics, and lifestyle factors such as smoking, consuming alcohol, and exercising.

However, the evidence the researchers examined was still solid, and it came from a variety of studies on the subject. These findings are also consistent with earlier research, which has shown that small but long-term dietary and lifestyle changes can have major health advantages, including increased longevity.

All of the mechanisms that explain why food can improve lifespan are yet unknown. However, the ideal diet discovered by the researchers in this study contains a variety of antioxidant-rich foods. According to some human cell research, these chemicals may reduce or prevent cell damage, which is one of the causes of ageing. However, because research in this area is still underway, it is unclear if antioxidants consumed as part of a healthy diet will have the same effect. Many of the foods studied contain anti-inflammatory qualities, which may help to delay the onset of many diseases – as well as the ageing process.

Changing your diet altogether is, of course, tough. However, adopting some of the items that have been proved to promote longevity may still be beneficial.