100,000 People, 30 Years, One Clear Winner vs Aging

Generally speaking, the scientific community most highly lauds the Mediterranean diet as being best for general health:

The Mediterranean Diet: What Is It Good For? ← what isn’t it good for?!

However, even this can be tweaked with specific health considerations in mind, for example:

Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean Diet ← these tweaks offer adjusted versions of the Mediterranean diet, optimized for anti-inflammation, gut health, heart health, or brain health

And today we present to you some very good research into…

The best diet for aging well

Let’s be clear on terms first: by “aging well”, this means reaching age 70 without chronic diseases and maintaining good cognitive, physical, and mental health.

105,015 participants (of whom, 66% women, average age 53 at the start of the study) were followed for up to 30 years. Not in the stalkery way, but in the longitudinal study way. We say “up to”, because as with any sizeable longitudinal study, some died before the end of the study.

9,771 of them were deemed, at the end of the study, to have achieved “healthy aging”.

So, how did those participants achieve that, in terms of diet?

The dietary patterns that had the strongest positive impact were:

• AHEI (Alternative Healthy Eating Index): best for mental and physical function, overall healthy aging.
• PHDI (Planetary Health Diet Index): best for cognitive health and survival to age 70.
• DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension): strongest general impact.
• MIND (Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay): best for brain health.
• rEDIH (Reversed Empirical Dietary Index for Hyperinsulinemia): most effective for chronic disease prevention.

In contrast:

• EIDP (Empirically Inflammatory Dietary Pattern): shocking nobody, performed least well in all areas

You are probably wondering what those dietary patterns actually consist of, so click here to see a chart of what’s included or excluded in each dietary pattern.

As you can see, the AHEI diet that was “best for mental and physical function, overall healthy aging” is essentially the Mediterranean diet with three small tweaks:

1. no seafood, but long-chain omega-3 fatty acids include to compensate
2. no sugar-sweetened beverages or fruit juices
3. “no” sodium (in other words, minimal sodium, since almost everything contains trace amounts)

The PHDI diet, which was “best for cognitive health and survival to age 70” is essentially a whole-foods plant-based diet. Which in turn is very consistent with the Mediterranean, except that it excludes animal products, of which the Mediterranean diet uses small amounts.

You can read the paper in its entirety here:

Optimal dietary patterns for healthy aging

Want to know more?

A panel of 69 doctors and nutritionists examined the evidence for 38 diets (including Mediterranean, MIND, DASH, Vegan, Keto, Slimfast, WeightWatchers, Nutrisystem, and more) and scored them in 21 categories (e.g. best for general health, best for weight loss, best for heart, best against diabetes, etc):

Which Diet? Top Diets Ranked By Experts

Enjoy!