b'SENSE, NONSENSE AND SCIENCEBY: JOE SCHWARCZFOOD, GLORIOUS FOOD! Food, glorious food Now a team of Norwegian researchersincreasing whole grain intake from 50 to Were anxious to try it has made a gallant attempt to quantify the225 grams. Eating a handful of nuts (25 Three banquets a day risks and benefits of various dietary com- grams) will get you an extra 1.7 years, Our favourite dietponents in terms of modifying life expec- while 200 grams of fish will net half a Just picture a great big steak tancy. They have drawn on data availableyear, as will 400 grams of fruit (an apple Fried, roasted or stewed from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD)is about 200 grams, a half a cup of blue-Oh food study, a collaborative, ongoing effort byberries around 100). Adding 150 grams of Wonderful food some 3,500 researchers around the worldvegetables adds a third of a year (cup and Marvellous food who assess risk factors for mortality anda half of broccoli) while dairy and white Glorious food!disability from major diseases in somemeat seem not to have any effect on lon-204 countries. Combining life expec- gevity. Decreasing refined grains from 150 W e can all identify with thosetancy information from the GBD with ato 50 grams (a slice of white bread is 40 classic lyrics from the musicalPubMed search for meta-analyses studiesgrams) will get you a year, as will cutting Oliver. Just think about howthat examined dose-response data on theout sugar-sweetened beverages. Giving up much of our lives revolve around food.impact of various food groups on mortalityred and processed meat will result in a A lot! Consider how often conversationsallowed the researchers to estimate thegain of three years in life expectancy. drift to when to eat, what to eat, whatchange in life expectancy based on dietaryRemember though, that statistics not to eat, where to eat, how much to eatchoices. The result is a tabulation of theapply to populations, not to individu-and with whom to eat. To be sure, eatingnumber of years lost or gained by alteringals whose longevity is determined by is one of the great pleasures of life, andthe amounts of specific foods eaten.numerous factors other than diet, rang-so is talking about it. With the currentIt turns out that making dietarying from inherited traits and body weight onslaught of nutritional information, dis- changes is worthwhile. A 20-year-old manto activity level and any chronic disease cussions often gravitate towards the linkor woman who makes appropriate changesthat may be present. While the specific between food and health. can increase their life expectancy by annumber of years mentioned in the study The attention paid to nutrition isastounding 10-13 years! If the change ismay not be applicable to an individual, well warranted. We are constructed ofmade at age 60, the increase is somewhateveryone is likely to benefit from paying what we eat! Our body breaks down foodless, 8-9 years, but even at age 80, life canattention to the data laboriously gathered into its components and then reassemblesbe extended by about three years. Theand analysed by the Norwegian scientists. these in various ways to form our tissues,proposed dietary changes as described inIncrease your intake of legumes, whole bones, and the myriad molecules involvedthe paper published in the peer-reviewedgrains, nuts, vegetables, and fish while in the reactions that together constitutejournal, PLOS Medicine, are quite man- you cut back on sugar, red and processed life. We really are what we eat, and ourageable. Lets have a look.meat. That is likely to give you more years health, and in turn our life expectancy, isAdding 200 grams of legumes aand more occasions to debate the merits a function of what we put into our body.day will get you two extra years, as willof this study. Of course, food is not the only deter-minant of health. Genetics, activity level, exposure to microbes and to environ-mental toxins all play a role. But at least with food we have some control over what we dig into. But what do we choose, and how much? There is no lack of nutritional research to consider. Since 2017, roughly 250,000 research papers have been pub-lished dealing with every aspect of nutri-tion. Many of these have explored the link between health and the major food groups. As one might expect, given the large number of studies, diverse method-ologies used, different populations exam-ined, and researchers sometimes having vested interests, there is a fair degree of disagreement about the advice that should be offered to the public. 12IEUROPEAN SEEDIEUROPEAN-SEED.COM'