You might have heard the news earlier this month about a landmark study showing that improving diet quality can add a decade or more years to your life. Of course, the goal is not only about adding years to life, but life to years. Modern medicine has been quite successful in extending life, but not always with strategies rooted in wellness and chronic disease prevention. Years of illness, managed by medication and marked by frequent medical interventions and hospital stays is an unfortunate reality for too many older Americans. True longevity, in contrast, is about a health-supporting lifestyle that brings about vibrance and vitality and vigor – namely, what we eat and how we move.
While it’s awesome that this story generated so much media buzz, it’s hardly news. Nutrition experts have long been extolling the virtues of a high-quality diet and its potential to increase longevity. Some of the most powerful and impressive evidence we have come from the Blue Zones, those areas of the world where populations routinely live to 100 years or more. There, diets are plant-predominant and populations rely on staples like leafy greens and beans. Sugary, processed foods are not the norm; sweets are savored for special occasions like holidays. In the Blue Zones, exercise is a normal part of everyday life.
When it comes to chronic illness, we hear a lot of genetics. And genetics do play a role, but they just load the gun. It’s the food we eat that pulls the trigger. The food we eat is the largest contributor to our medical destiny. Poor diet quality can lead to premature death: 500,000 people every year in the United States alone, in fact. As Diet ID Founder and CEO likes to say, DNA is not destiny... dinner is.
So, how can we effectively improve diet quality at scale? Improving diet quality logically starts with KNOWING diet quality. Diet ID’s patented, breakthrough approach makes it easy, fast, and even fun to assess and effectively manage diet quality at scale. We can only manage what we measure, and Diet ID allows us to do both.
Learn more – sign up for a demo today.
For takeaways from the study, check out quotes from Diet ID’s CEO David Katz’s in this CNN article, and quotes from Diet ID’s Director of Nutrition Programming Dina Aronson in this CNN article.
