The best foods for a longer life

Even switching to these healthy ingredients in place of processed foods at 60 could add up to eight years to your life. What we eat can have a profound impact on our projected lifespan.

Adding plenty of vegetables, lentils, chickpeas, nuts and porridge to your diet from the age of 20 could help you to live a decade or more longer.

What we eat can have a profound impact on our projected lifespan.

Researchers from the University of Bergen, reporting in the medical journal PLOS One last week, revealed that adding plenty of vegetables, lentils, chickpeas, nuts and porridge to your diet from the age of 20 could help you to live a decade or more longer.

Lars Fadnes, one of the paper’s authors, says even switching to these healthy ingredients in place of processed foods at 60 could add up to eight years to your life. Here’s how you can eat to live longer.

 

Lentils, beans and chickpeas

Eating more legumes was cited as providing the biggest potential increase in lifespan by the University of Bergen team. A 20-year-old who increases their intake from nothing to 200g a day might expect to add 2½ years to their life, they said.

“Pulses and legumes are low in fat and a good source of fibre, which has been shown to reduce levels of total cholesterol,” says Ian Marber, a nutritional therapist.

 

Drink three cups of coffee a day

Coffee is packed with antioxidants and other beneficial plant compounds. Last week researchers from Queen Mary University of London reported that those drinking up to three cups of coffee a day were 25 per cent less likely to die of any cause during the 11-year study – but it must be freshly brewed, not instant.

 

A handful of nuts

A daily serving of 25g of nuts could add almost a year to your life, according to the University of Bergen scientists. “Many are a source of minerals, including magnesium, that are important for general good health,” Marber says.

 

Eat a bowl of porridge every day

In the University of Bergen study, eating porridge as part of a total of 225g daily wholegrain foods was associated with two extra years of life. Oats are rich in soluble fibre, which binds to and reduces harmful lower-density lipoprotein cholesterol in the blood.

 

Use olive oil daily

Last month a team of Harvard nutritionists stated that adding half a tablespoon (7g) of olive oil daily to meals could prolong life. The research found that people who use even small amounts of olive oil have a 19 per cent lower risk of death from heart disease.

 

Eat fish twice a week

In a study of 240,729 men and 180,580 women who were followed for 16 years, regular consumption of oily fish (at least two portions weekly) was associated with an 8 per cent lower risk of premature death from any cause in women and a 9 per cent reduced risk in men.

The Times