Recently, Harvard researchers have discovered that even the smallest dietary improvements can make a dramatic difference in health and promote longevity when sustained over time. This is encouraging news for those who find the idea of a complete diet overhaul quite the task to take on.
This new study is the first to display that boosting diet quality over at least 12 years is linked to drastically lower total mortality, as well as lower cardiovascular mortality. It defines quality in the diet as eating:
“Overall, our findings underscore the benefits of healthy eating patterns including the Mediterranean diet and the DASH diet.
Our study indicates that even modest improvements in diet quality could meaningfully influence mortality risk and conversely, a worsening diet quality may increase the risk,” - said lead author Mercedes Sotos-Prieto,...who worked on the study while a postdoctoral fellow in the Harvard Chan School Department of Nutrition and who is currently an assistant professor of nutrition at Ohio University.
Additionally, Sotos-Prieto and her colleagues evaluated data from 74,000 adults to ascertain the effect of diet on death risk. The data, which covered a 12-year period from 1986 to 1998, came from two main studies: the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals’ Follow-up Study.
In this study, participants were required to provide information about their diet, health and lifestyle at routine intervals. Furthermore, the researchers followed them for 12 continuous years from 1998 to 2010 to document all the fatalities.
Three scoring methods were used to help assess the diet quality:
Each type of method assigns higher scores to nutritious food and lower scores to less healthy foods.
After conducting these methods, analysis of the findings showed improved diet quality over 12 years which was connected with a lower death risk in the subsequent 12 years, regardless of what scoring method was used. Moreover, foods that contributed the most to diet quality included: fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fish and n-3 fatty acids.
Most remarkably, a 20-percent boost in diet quality scores was linked to an 8- to 17-percent decrease in the risk of death. Conversely, a reduction in diet quality was tied to a 6- to a 12-percent rise in the death risk.
Participants who maintained a higher food quality score on any of the three healthy diet measurement methods over 12 years had a 9- to 14-percent reduction in death incidence from any cause.
Additionally, those who begin out the study with relatively unhealthy diets but improved their eating habits the most also had a significantly lower risk of death in subsequent years.
The 20-percent improvement is a modest amount that can be attained in a handful of ways. In an interview with Olive Oil Times, Sotos-Prieto provided examples of how one simple daily swap from less healthy fare to more healthy fare can boost the nutrition of a diet enough to result in an increase in longevity.
Any of the following exchanges can constitute a 20-percent increase in quality of food intake:
“A healthy eating pattern can be adopted according to individuals’ food and cultural preferences and health conditions. There is no one-size-fits-all diet,” - said Frank Hu, professor, and chair of the Harvard Chan School Department of Nutrition and senior author of the study.
The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
It is known in history that the Duke of Medinaceli discovered an incredible tasting Olive Oil and came back with the seedling plants to the Iberian peninsula, where he was Lord of Arbequa. Arbequa, which today is Arbeca, is located northwest of the coastal city of Tarragona, near the city of Lleida in Catalonia, Spain.
Arbequina olive trees rooted throughout the region, but the large olive oceans which flow through the Southern hills of Andalucia were filled with Picual trees and this became the primary variety of Spain.
With the revival in artisan Olive Oil popularity in the 20th century, Arbequina olives and their oil went through a period of trying to redefine themselves -- so much so that this tree now breeds most New World olive groves: California, South America, Australia, South Africa, and more.
The tree is solid, hardy, and reaches maturity to develop fruit at a younger age than other varieties. The fruit is small and offers a good amount of oil yield of up to even 25%! This yield is available early in the harvest period.
While most varieties need to mature longer on the trees in order to create a higher yield, after sacrificing essential nutrients, Arbequina can be harvested earlier and retain it's high yield, nutrient rich oil with the perfect flavor characteristics.
This early oil is clean, fresh, and herbal with notes of apple, sweet almond, and artichoke undertones. It is fruity without much bitterness and slight pungency. It's fragile flavor profile make it the ideal everyday Olive Oil. This variety of oil should be consumed everyday mainly because its perfect flavor gives it a much shorter shelf life than other Olive Oils.
These olives contain fewer polyphenols than other varieties, as a result, yielding an oil with a small amount of bitterness and less of a defense against oxidation. In addition, it also shows to have a higher content of linoleic acid, a shorter chain omega-6 fatty acid, which simply because it is shorter will break down faster in the oil than average and long chain fatty acids.
The tree's tiny and hardy characteristics make it the ideal variety for high density and extreme high density planting. These New World plantings now give everyone two annual harvests: October/November in the Northern Hemisphere and May/June in the Southern Hemisphere.
Arbequinas wonderful fruity flavor make it the ideal olive oil for tipping over creamy vanilla bean ice cream, with just a sprinkle of sea salt to finish it off.
