You probably don’t need the reminder that eating well and maintaining a healthy diet contribute to better health for you now- and for the longer term (though take a look here for substantial evidence to support this fact). As food expert Matthew Rees (of the website Food and Health Facts) reminds us, the standard American diet (SAD) of highly processed foods (with few vegetables and fruits) may be just as responsible for shorter life spans as COVID, given that American life expectancy was falling even before the pandemic began. Rees describes a newly published study in PLOS Medicine that analyzes life expectancy for those who ditch the SAD diet and instead switch to a substantially healthier, optimal diet of legumes, whole grains, fish, fruit, and veggies. Even for those who are older (60 years old), this study suggests you’d gain an additional 8 years of life expectancy if you finally committed to a healthier diet (and you’d even get an additional 3 years if you switched at age 80!). There’s just no getting around the connection between better eating and better health. For more on this study, grab some carrots and click here.

Not only will highly processed junk foods imperil your health (disrupting the bacteria balance in your gut, raising your risk of cardiovascular disease, and so on) but we now have even more evidence to support the value of certain essential nutrients that come from whole, unprocessed foods. For example, there is data to support the health value of extra virgin olive oil (EVOO), the product of simply crushed olives in contrast to more processed forms of cooking oil. This form of olive oil contains significant polyphenols which are thought to lower your risk of cardiovascular disease. Using it as part of a healthy Mediterranean diet should reap substantial benefits for your heart and blood vessels. To find out more, grab your salad spinner and read here. 

Or consider fiber. It’s probably been drummed into your head that fiber is an essential component of any healthy diet to support a healthy digestive tract along with lowering your risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Now comes new research that a high fiber diet (especially soluble fiber like oats and legumes) may reduce your risk of dementia as well. Researchers in Japan analyzed data from participants ages 40-64 over several decades to find that those who ingested higher levels of fibers had a lower risk of developing dementia. While the cause of the connection is unclear, it is hypothesized that fiber may reduce the kind of neuroinflammation associated with dementia- another example of the gut-brain connection. To find out more, take out the Cheerios and click here.

Finally, when you really drill down on ingesting the right nutrients, Functional Medicine expert Dr.  Kara Fitzgerald wants you to really understand epinutrients, which she characterizes as the secret ingredients that make your food into medicine. Labeling them as “longevity superstars”, Dr. Fitzgerald believes these nutrients, derived from whole natural foods (foods in their original form) drive the sort of essential anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, and anti-microbial properties that you need for a longer, healthier life. As one expert states, “Other than genes, it’s hard to think of something that can be more powerful than food in determining whether someone is going to make it to 100 or die before 50.” And the epinutrients she wants you to ingest (such as folate, vitamin B12, and choline) are not exotic or hard to find, but rather present in such basic whole foods as leafy vegetables, eggs, poultry, fish, and mushrooms. Eating a broad variety of basic whole foods, Dr.Fitzgerald states, should get you the array of nutrients that are essential for optimizing your health and lowering your risk of disease. As for using supplements instead? You’ll be missing out on the valuable interactions between foods that bring us the right quantities and combinations to promote your health. So instead, just saute some shiitake mushrooms in EVOO and find out more here.