At Sea On U.S. Election Day
It is wonderful to be at sea in the turmoil of this year’s election. No one is talking about it onboard. What a relief.
We are told there are passengers from 39 nations on board, and crew from more nations. The entire day, we hear not a word about the American election.
The demographic is very much our age group. If anything, we are younger than most. Hard to say, but we see some very old but still adventuresome travelers, which gives us hope for our own future travels.
We were wide awake before seven. I got up and went to get some coffee. We can have it delivered to the room, but on these relaxed days at sea, we don’t like to commit to a time and it is just as easy to go get my own cup at the dedicated coffee bar. Actually, coffee is available in many places on the ship, and the smell of coffee early in the morning wafts everywhere.
We had decided to try The Grand Dining Room for breakfast, wanting to be less formal in a very formal environment.
The waiters are all white-jacketed and very pleasant. The menu is lovely – the tastiest item was smoked salmon with cream and capers and white onion, a great way to start the day. AdventureMan shared with me. The fruit platters were large enough for two; I cut most of mine into small pieces to stir into my virtuous oatmeal. Don’t you think smoked salmon is virtuous too? I think I prefer virtuous tasty smoked salmon to virtuous oatmeal.
I am not complaining. I eat oatmeal every day at home. As a diabetic, it is great for keeping my blood sugar levels down. The Nautica had really nice oatmeal. And oatmeal just pales in comparison to all the lovely choices available for breakfast, all the beautiful pastries, croissants, breakfast breads, all the lovely foods with a lot of fats and sugars. Yes, even on a cruise, I pay attention. I will try not to whine again.
After breakfast, I grabbed some of my hotter weather clothes to iron – the compression bags puts some serious wrinkles into linen clothing.
The laundry room is much smaller than it appears on the ship map, but the iron was hot and efficient, and there were other passengers doing small loads of washing and drying. It is handy that it is all free. There is a laundry on board, and although we have laundry service I prefer doing my own laundry. We have a line in the shower where we can hang items we have hand laundered in the sink, and we found little detergent slips on Amazon that are very compact and efficient for hand laundry.
Then we walked the walking track, windy, invigorating; we have a lovely sunny day, warm enough but sometimes the wind was so strong it blew me into AdventureMan. I am happy we packed some of our cool-weather gear; when we are at sea, it can be windy and chilly. We checked out the gym, where AdventureMan found mats available for stretching as I look eagerly at the outside spa overlooking the bow of the ship. Heaven!
Back in the room, AdventureMan naps as we wait for the eleven o-clock enrichment lecture on the Origins of the First Crusade, in preparation for our time in Sicily and Israel. I am excited we will be going to Acre, the old Crusader stronghold, the day we arrive there.
The lecture was well attended, probably four hundred or so passengers.
And then off we went to lunch at The Terrace restaurant.
We have found a table we love; sheltered by a small wall but still with a good view out over the aft of the ship. The Terrace is the ship’s buffet restaurant, except that it is not like a buffet where you dish up your own portions. There are very pleasant wait-staff every few feet who put food on your plate. You can say “a very small portion, please” or “could I have a little more of that?” and they will give you exactly what you wish. Don’t you love having choices?
It all feels so indulgent.
After lunch, I read while AdventureMan attended an afternoon lecture on How Man Learned to Navigate by the Stars, which he said turns out to be very complicated. Here is the truth, I will admit it, I needed a nap. I am not yet fully adapted to the time change. The little couch is a perfect size for me, and there is a soft sea-green throw I can cover up with and I am out like a light.
Dinner this night is at the Polo Grill, and, sadly, while these reservations are greatly coveted, by dinner time I don’t care. I don’t much want to dress up; I wish they would just deliver the dinner to the room, but this is part of the Oceania experience and so we dress and go up for dinner. The code is “country-club casual.” There are many interpretations of what that might mean. Here is ours.
I had a shrimp cocktail, tomato salad, and lobster, AdventureMan had the Lobster Bisque, Fois Gras en Croute, and the lobster, and we split a Creme Brûlée. The Creme Brûlée was very good.
It is a lovely kind of evening, and we enjoyed ourselves because we do this so rarely. The night is sweet and warm, the moon is full, and we can’t resist a lap or two around the walking track before we go to sleep.
The Sad And Painful Truth
AdventureMan and I have a lot in common; we share a lot of the same values and we’re in our 49th year of marriage.
And yet . . .
We also have our differences. Because AdventureMan is very commanding, I have had to learn how to gently but firmly set some boundaries.
So today he suggested we hit Shoreline Deli, which was fine with me because I love their Greek salad and I also buy a lot of my spices there. You can buy them in small quantities, and they are more fresh than the ones that stand waiting in your pantry for years.
It’s not a sit-down kind of place; we stand with others who have ordered, waiting for our order to be prepared and taken out. There is always a lot to look at, and often they have something that no one else carries.
As we finish lunch, AdventureMan says “I see you found some of your favorite cookies. I saved room hoping you would share with me.”
I said “Of course, what is mine is yours.”
Very quickly I had a second thought and reframed my response. “Of course, what is mine is yours, up to half.”
At this point, I opened the little box and counted the cookies, a very plain Greek cookie with very little sugar and some cinnamon.
What does AdventureMan say? “I can’t believe you’re counting the cookies!”
He knows why I am counting the cookies. We have stylistic differences. I can buy a large 85% Cocoa chocolate bar and eat one square a day. I don’t need more, and rarely do I really want more. AdventureMan, on the other hand, has unrestrained cravings. There are things I have to hide – mixed nuts, Japanese rice crackers, cookies, cakes, and M&M’s. If I don’t set a limit, or hide them, they are free game.
I am not saying this is wrong. It is simply a stylistic difference. At the same time, if I want something special, the only way I can be sure there will be some left for me when I need it is to hide it.
I am not an ogre. I also bought beautiful mini chocolate macaroon cookies Two years ago at this time we were in the Bordeaux region of France and bought a package of traditional macaroon cookies with dark chocolate bottoms and each had one at the end of each day, and they lasted right up to our very last night before we flew back home. They were so rich and moist that one was more than enough.
AdventureMan was delighted to see the chocolate-bottomed macaroons. We each had one. I have no idea how many there are. I am not counting; AdventureMan is free to nibble as he needs. I just needed one. Well, maybe two, they are tiny, very tiny.
Take Your Chocolate!
This article is from Forbes Magazine, and talks about the relationship between styles /content of eating and longevity. This is just a tiny excerpt from a long article because I loved the last line :-).
Results of two recently released studies, published in the journals Age and the British Journal of Nutrition (BJN), show that consuming cocoa flavanols improves cardiovascular function and lessens age-related stiffening of arteries and burdens on the heart in healthy adults. The studies were part of an EU-based project called FLAVIOLA.
Marc Merx, M.D., professor of Cardiology at the Klinikum Region Hanover and FLAVIOLA’s project coordinator, reports that the studies’ main finding was cocoa flavanols’ effect on vascular aging and blood pressure. “Blood pressure and increases in blood pressure are important factors associated with age-related morbidity and with mortality from cardiovascular disease,” he says. In fact, he was personally surprised that the findings showed flavanols to be capable of lowering blood pressure as effectively as exercise.
You can read the entire article for yourself, New Studies Confirm Role of Diet in Healthy Aging, here.
10 Science Proven Ways to be Happier
Happy – or happier – Saturday. Doesn’t everyone want to be happy? Happier? As it turns out, the science of being happy is studied, and there are ways proven to improve your feelings of happiness. I found this on a website called Motto, through AOL News:
10 Science-Proven Ways to Be Happier
Science continues to find ever more specific and idiosyncratic ways we can bring just a bit more of happiness into our lives
We never get tired of thinking about happiness, do we? Life is so much nicer when you’re able to couple it with joy and gratitude.
We’ve published posts before about simple ways to be happy and retraining your brain for more gratitude, and Buffer’s CEO Joel has even shared his own daily to-do list for happiness. (There’s also our popular list of things to stop doing to be happier.)
Meanwhile, science continues to study happiness, finding ever more specific and idiosyncratic ways we can bring just a bit more of this elusive quality into our lives.
I love keeping an eye on these studies, and thought I would share the latest batch with you here to see if any of them might resonate with you and make you just a bit happier.
Here are 10 truly unique ways to be happier that you can start today!
1. Do cultural activities
Need a boost of joy? Trying seeing a play or heading to a museum.
A study that collected data on the activities, mood and health of 50,000 adults in Norway found that people who participated in more cultural activities reported higher happiness levels and lower anxiety and depression.
“Participation in receptive and creative cultural activities was significantly associated with good health, good satisfaction with life, low anxiety and depression scores in both genders,” the researchers write.
Curiously, men saw stronger benefits from receptive, or passive, cultural activities (like visiting museums, art exhibitions, concerts or theaters) while women more enjoyed active participation events (like club meetings, singing, outdoor activities and dance).
2. Keep a diary: Rereading it brings joy
To learn to find more gratitude and joy in every day—not just special occasions, the boring days, too—try keeping a diary and re-reading it from time to time.
Researchers who did a variety of experiments involving keeping a journal discovered that “ordinary events came to be perceived as more extraordinary over time” as participants rediscovered them through their older writings.
In other words, simply writing down our ordinary, regular-day experiences is a way of banking up some happiness down the line, when the activities we describe could bring us unexpected joy.
3. Make small talk with a stranger
Chatting up your barista or cashier? Good for your health!
Behavioral scientists gave a group of Chicago train commuters a $5 Starbucks gift card in exchange for striking up a conversation with a stranger during their ride. (While another group kept to themselves.)
Those who started conversations reported a more positive experience than those who had stayed quiet—even though they had predicted they would feel happier being solitary.
Another study saw similar results from giving Starbucks visitors a $5 gift card in exchange for having a “genuine interaction with the cashier.”
It seems that connecting with another person—no matter how briefly—increases our happiness.
4. But have meaningful conversations, too
While positive small talk is great, more substantial conversations could up our happiness quotient even higher.
A study that tracked the conversations of 80 people for 4 days found that, in keeping with the small-talk study, higher well-being is associated with spending less time alone and more time talking to others.
But researchers also discovered that even higher well-being was associated with having less small talk and more substantive conversations.
“Together, the findings demonstrate that the happy life is social rather than solitary and conversationally deep rather than superficial,” the researchers write.
So dive deep in your conversations with friends and loved ones—it’s great for you.
5. Live in the suburbs and get involved
This one seems to apply to the U.S. A. only, but I still found it quite interesting.
I would have guessed that city dwellers might be the most satisfied with where they live, but in a poll of 1,600 U.S. adults, the highest rate of happiness was found in the suburbs.
84 percent of suburbanites rated the communities where they live as overall excellent or good, compared to 75 percent of urban dwellers and 78 percent of rural residents.
Another study on city happiness found that residents are happier if they feel connected to their cities and neighborhoods and feel positively about the state of city services.
So wherever you live, make sure to get involved in your community for maximum happiness.
6. Listen to sad songs: They provide emotional release
How could sad songs make us happy? And why do we seek them out?
That’s the question researchers wanted to answer with a survey of 722 people from around the world.
They discovered that there are 4 main reasons we take comfort in melancholy songs:
- They allow us to drift off into imagination
- They might provide us catharsis (emotion regulation)
- They allow us to relate to a common emotion (empathy), and
- They’re divorced from our actual problems (no “real-life” implications)
Researchers determined that “listening to sad music can lead to beneficial emotional effects such as regulation of negative emotion and mood as well as consolation.”
7. Spend money on experiences, not items
Here’s one that’s easy to understand but might be tougher to fix.
We know that spending money on life experiences will make us happier than spending money on material things (and it does!) but we can’t seem to stop ourselves from choosing the wrong option.
That’s what a study in The Journal of Positive Psychology found as they surveyed people before and after they made purchases.
The series of studies concluded that we’re more likely to spend on items than experiences because we can quantify them more easily and we want to see the best value for our dollars.
However, they found that the study subjects reported that after they spent, experiences brought them greater well-being and they considered them to be a better use of money.
So if we can keep that in mind, it’s possible to have our cake and eat it, too—definitely something to be happy about!
8. Set tiny, attainable goals: Make someone smile
It might be cliché, but making someone happy will make you happy, too.
And science says the more specific you can be with your goal, the better.
University of Houston professor Melanie Rudd found that a group of people who were told to make someone smile felt both happier and more confident that they’d actually achieved their goal than a similar group who’d been told simply to make someone else happy.
Even more interesting: In a separate experiment, people wrongly predicted that going for the bigger goal would make them happier.
“If you can meet or exceed your expectations of achieving a goal, you will be happier than if you fall short of your expectations,” Rudd explained.
9. Look at beautiful things: Design makes us happy
Could looking at a beautiful object make you feel happier?
The smartphone company HTC conducted a study that says yes.
In a series of laboratory and online experiments, volunteers looked at and interacted with objects that fell into 3 categories: beautiful, functional, or both beautiful and functional.
Their reactions uncovered some interesting findings, like:
- Well-designed objects that are both beautiful and functional trigger positive emotions like calmness and contentment, reducing negative feelings like anger and annoyance by almost a third.
- Purely beautiful objects (not functional) reduce negative emotions by 29%, increasing a sense of calmness and ease.
Objects that were both beautiful and functional created an especially high level of emotional arousal:
In general, people feel happier looking at and using beautiful objects that work well.
10. Eat more fruits and veggies
We know being healthier makes us happy, but can carrots give you purpose?
I have to admit I didn’t expect such a direct link between happiness and eating a lot of fruits and vegetables as researchers in New Zealand report.
Their 13-day study of 405 people who kept food diaries showed that people who ate more fruits and vegetables reported higher than average levels of curiosity, creativity, and positive emotions, as well as engagement, meaning, and purpose.
Even more interestingly, participants often scored higher on all of those scales on days when they ate more fruits and vegetables.
“These findings suggest that fruit and vegetable intake is related to other aspects of human flourishing, beyond just feeling happy,” writes the research team.
FitBit: Close Friend, Not Perfect
Who wants a perfect friend? I know I am flawed, would a perfect friend want to be friends with me? Ummm . . . probably not, and I would have a hard time living up to a perfect friend.
Having said that, my FitBit is my constant companion. She would like to be my nanny, but I don’t allow her to nag me, I just share time with her where we have things in common.
The cons:
She can’t go in the water (so far as I know, and I have searched intensely to see if it were possible for her to go into water aerobics with me) so I don’t get any credit with her or on my daily stats for all the hard work I do in the pool.
She is so unobtrusive that sometimes I forget her. Not often; she is mostly part of my routine, but the other day, a very busy day, I realized as I was getting ready for bed that she was not with me. I always, routinely, put her on my nightgown. She wasn’t there. I had left her on a shirt as I changed clothes. I had lost stats for an entire five hour period, horrors!
The pros:
She really encourages me to move more. Did you know sitting is the new smoking? Too much sitting correlates to dying earlier than you need to? So when I am watching a show and AdventureMan is not with me, I pull out the running trampoline and run for twenty or thirty minutes as the Kilchers celebrate Thanksgiving or take a friend out to a distant Alaskan island. I don’t usually manage 10,000 steps a day, which is the goal, but I manage more than I would without FitBit; she keeps me aware that I need to move.
She tracks my sleep. I have discovered I am not a good judge of how well I sleep. There are some nights I think I was awake a lot and I discover that no, I might have been awake for a ten minute period, but I slept well most of the time. There are nights I believe I have slept well, but she shows me I was restless 14 times (that can happen when the love-of-your-life has a cold and is coughing). She even gives me a percentage of how efficiently I sleep; I find this very reassuring.
She also tracks – if you ask her to – food, activities, glucose, weight and some other factors. She will also – if you ask her to – share all your information with your closest 1500 friends.
(Gasp of horror)
No! No! That’s private information!
She also has a partner, a wireless scale that will send the information right to your dashboard, and to your monthly evaluation.
Again, no. No, not for me. I don’t share that information, not with anyone. Some things are just private.
She is faithful. She warns me when she is running out of steam and needs to be recharged. She is always with me, unless I forget her. She’s been with me about a year, and I find that unlike some devices that I quickly decide are not-the-real-me, she is a good, helpful friend. She lets me set the pace, and she respects my boundaries. Her respect for my boundaries allows me to step up my pace to try to please her. 🙂 She acknowledges my flaws, but she is faithful anyway, and, as I said before, she minds her own business and doesn’t nag me.
All in all, our friendship is a great success.
Greece, Italy Have the World’s Most Overweight Kids
Most people know that the United States has a childhood obesity problem. Less well known is that according to the latest data from the OECD is that we are not actually the world leaders in experiencing this issue. It’s Greece and Italy who have the most overweight kids:
This may not jibe with a lot of hype about the benefits of the Mediterranean diet but it turns out that said diet may no longer be especially popular in Greece and Italy. In 2008, Josef Schmidhuber of the UN Food and Agricultural Organization said traditional eating patterns in southern Europe had “decayed into a moribund state” and drastically increased their overall calorie intake and especially consumption of animal fat, salt, and sweeteners.
One Third of World Now Clinically Obese
From AOL News/ Huffpost:
By MARIA CHENG
LONDON (AP) — Almost a third of the world is now fat, and no country has been able to curb obesity rates in the last three decades, according to a new global analysis.
Researchers found more than 2 billion people worldwide are now overweight or obese. The highest rates were in the Middle East and North Africa, where nearly 60 percent of men and 65 percent of women are heavy. The U.S. has about 13 percent of the world’s fat population, a greater percentage than any other country. China and India combined have about 15 percent.
“It’s pretty grim,” said Christopher Murray of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, who led the study. He and colleagues reviewed more than 1,700 studies covering 188 countries from 1980 to 2013. “When we realized that not a single country has had a significant decline in obesity, that tells you how hard a challenge this is.”
Murray said there was a strong link between income and obesity; as people get richer, their waistlines also tend to start bulging. He said scientists have noticed accompanying spikes in diabetes and that rates of cancers linked to weight, like pancreatic cancer, are also rising.
The new report was paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and published online Thursday in the journal, Lancet.
Last week, the World Health Organization established a high-level commission tasked with ending childhood obesity.
“Our children are getting fatter,” Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO’s director-general, said bluntly during a speech at the agency’s annual meeting in Geneva. “Parts of the world are quite literally eating themselves to death.” Earlier this year, WHO said that no more than 5 percent of your daily calories should come from sugar.
“Modernization has not been good for health,” said Syed Shah, an obesity expert at United Arab Emirates University, who found obesity rates have jumped five times in the last 20 years even in a handful of remote Himalayan villages in Pakistan. His research was presented this week at a conference in Bulgaria. “Years ago, people had to walk for hours if they wanted to make a phone call,” he said. “Now everyone has a cellphone.”
Shah also said the villagers no longer have to rely on their own farms for food.
“There are roads for (companies) to bring in their processed foods and the people don’t have to slaughter their own animals for meat and oil,” he said. “No one knew about Coke and Pepsi 20 years ago. Now it’s everywhere.”
In Britain, the independent health watchdog issued new advice Wednesday recommending that heavy people be sent to free weight-loss classes to drop about 3 percent of their weight. It reasoned that losing just a few pounds improves health and is more realistic. About two in three adults in the U.K. are overweight, making it the fattest country in Western Europe.
“This is not something where you can just wake up one morning and say, ‘I am going to lose 10 pounds,'” said Mike Kelly, the agency’s public health director, in a statement. “It takes resolve and it takes encouragement.”
Sugar Eight Times More Addictive than Cocaine
This is from AOL News: “The rats go for the sugar and it is eight times more addictive than cocaine” in studies done on sugary foods.
A U.S. doctor is making it his mission to publicly highlight some scary effects sugar has on the body. The chairman of the Institute for Functional Medicine says we’re becoming more dependent on sugary foods and drinks – saying they’re even more addictive than cocaine.
On”CBS This Morning,” Dr. Mark Hyman said, “In animal studies, they find that the rats go for the sugar and that it’s eight times as addictive as cocaine. Small amounts of sugar can be part of a normal diet, but most of us are addicted to sugar and don’t know it.”
Hyman himself has gone as far as calling sugar and sugary foods “deadly.”
He told the New York Daily News that “sugar is the new nicotine. And worse, sugar actually causes diabetes and obesity.”
The doctor’s trying to help people find ways to lessen their dependence on sugar with tips from his book, “The Blood Sugar Solution 10-Day Detox Diet.”
On the book’s website, Dr. Hyman says 600 people took part in the diet, which encourages healthier eating habits. Together, they lost more than 4,000 pounds, and their average blood pressure fell by about 10 points.
Dr. Hyman told New York Daily News the average American eats 152 pounds of sugar a year. Whoa.
Dubai’s Weight Loss Challenge: 1 Gram Gold Per Kilo Lost
Need some motivation to cut that flab? If you live in Dubai, you can win gold to do just that. A new campaign “You are Worth … Your Weight in Gold” is aimed at promoting a healthy lifestyle and achieving optimal body weight. The contest is open for public.
The winner will be the one who loses maximum weight during the program period of 30 days from its inception on Friday this week. The top three winners will get a gold coin equivalent to AED 20,000. Other participants will get a gram of gold for each kilo reduced from their body weight. However, the minimum weight to lose for the eligibility is two kilograms.
Addressing a press conference on Tuesday, Dubai Municipality officials said the winners will get two grams of gold if they could reduce at least two kilograms within one month.
Hussain Nasser Lootah, director-general of Dubai Municipality, said the initiative comes after the grand success of ‘Yallah Walk’ campaign launched in 2011.
“It is also aimed at introducing walking tracks in different parks in the city of Dubai. Walking is an easy and economic way to stay fit and healthy. The municipality has provided residents with safe and accessible walking tracks in urban and rural areas,’ Lootah said.
“Currently Dubai has a total of 91 places where one can practice sport activities. These include residential parks, public parks, jogging track and beaches. In addition to this, every year the civic body opens new parks in more areas and adds sports equipments and tools for the public to promote a healthy community, he said.
“Ramadan is the most appropriate season to launch such initiatives as it reminds us about many health benefits of reducing weight and encourages us to take strong steps to change our bad lifestyles,’ he added.
The weight of each participant will be measured during registration and at the end of program. Participants can register at the event sites any day during the period. Participants must have excess weight to reduce and stay away from unhealthy methods to lose weight.
The final weight will be measured after the Eid holidays on Aug. 16.
Ahmed bin Sulayem, executive chairman of Dubai Multi Commodities Center (DMCC), said the DMCC is proud to support this health awareness drive to encourage society to change their daily routines in return for a healthier lifestyle.
‘We would highly encourage everyone from all walks of life to take part in this great initiative and hope DMCC’s contribution of AED 100,000 worth of gold coins will help motivate individuals reach the final target of improving and sustaining a healthy lifestyle and consequently a better quality of life,’ he said.
“I am sure Dubai can be the role model and astonish the world by its innovative ideas and initiatives,” said Anil Dhanak, general manager of Dubai Gold & Jewelry Group.”
Western Diet Killer:
From the UK Daily Mail Online:
The Western diet really IS a killer: People who eat white bread, butter and red meat are most likely to die young
- Those who ate fried and unhealthy food had doubled risk of early death
- Key culprits include red meat, white bread, butter, cream and sweet foods
- Findings ‘help explain’ why heart disease is still the UK’s biggest killer
PUBLISHED: 13:20 EST, 16 April 2013 | UPDATED: 02:08 EST, 17 April 2013
The typical Western diet, high in fat and sugar, really does lead to an early grave, new research suggests.
A study of more than 5,000 civil servants found those who ate the most fried and sweet food, processed and red meat, white bread and butter and cream doubled their risk of premature death or ill health in old age.
It adds to evidence that ‘Western style food’ is the reason why heart disease claims about 94,000 lives a year in the UK – more than any other illness.
The findings published in The American Journal of Medicine are based on a survey of British adults and suggest adherence to the diet increases the risk of premature death and disability later in life.
People who ate the most fried and sweet food, processed and red meat, white bread, butter and cream doubled their risk of premature death or ill health in old age
Lead researcher, Dr Tasnime Akbaraly, of the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in France, said: ‘The impact of diet on specific age-related diseases has been studied extensively, but few investigations have adopted a more holistic approach to determine the association of diet with overall health at older ages.’
She examined whether diet, assessed in midlife, using dietary patterns and adherence to the Alternative Healthy Eating Index (AHEI), is associated with physical ageing 16 years later.
The AHEI is an index of diet quality, originally designed to provide dietary guidelines with the specific intention to combat major chronic conditions such as heart disease and diabetes.
More…
Dr Akbaraly added: ‘We showed that following specific dietary recommendations such as the one provided by the AHEI may be useful in reducing the risk of unhealthy ageing, while avoidance of the “Western-type foods” might actually improve the possibility of achieving older ages free of chronic diseases.’
The researchers analysed data from the British Whitehall II cohort study and found following the AHEI can double the odds of reversing metabolic syndrome, a range of disorders known to cause heart disease and mortality.
The research adds to evidence that Western style food is the reason why heart disease claims about 94,000 lives a year in the UK – more than any other illness
They followed 3,775 men and 1,575 women from 1985-2009 with a mean age of 51 years.
Using a combination of hospital data, results of screenings conducted every five years, and registry data, investigators identified death rates and chronic diseases among participants.
At the follow up stage, just four per cent had achieved ‘ideal ageing’ – classed as being free of chronic conditions and having high performance in physical, mental and mental agility tests.
About 12 per cent had suffered a non-fatal cardiovascular event such as a stroke or heart attack, while almost three per cent had died from cardiovascular disease.
About three quarters were categorised as going through ‘normal ageing’.
The researchers said participants who hadn’t really stuck to the AHEI increased their risk of death, either from heart disease or another cause.
Those who followed a ‘Western-type diet’ consisting of fried and sweet food, processed food and red meat, refined grains, and high-fat dairy products, lowered their chances for ideal ageing.
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