Eat your vegetables!!!! Eating well is not just for the young as new study indicates doing so is also beneficial to the mortality of older individuals.

No Age Limit on Benefits of Eating Well

By Michael Smith, North American Correspondent, MedPage TodayPublished: February 13, 2012

Reviewed by Zalman S. Agus, MD; Emeritus Professor
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

Older people who eat properly are likely to live longer.

That's the implication of a study looking at mortality and eating habits among a cohort of nearly 4,000 people 65 and older, according to Luis Afonso, MD, of Wayne State University in Detroit, and colleagues.

After an average follow-up of 13 years, participants with a good diet had lower rates of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality, compared with those who had a poor diet, Afonso and colleagues reported in the Feb. 13 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

For the analysis, a good diet was defined as a score of greater than 80 on the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Healthy Eating Index, while a poor score was less than 51 on the 100-point scale. A middling diet, scoring 51 through 80, was defined as "in need of improvement."

The eating index has been shown previously to be associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and its associated risk factors, but its value as a prognostic tool in an older population has not been measured, Alfonso and colleagues noted.

To fill the gap, they looked at outcomes for 3,884 people 65 and older who took part in the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) between 1988 and 1994 and who had dietary information available.

The index itself has 10 dietary components, including such things as intake of fruits and vegetables, salt, meats and beans, and oils, and has been modified since its first version in 1995.

The original index was used for this analysis, Afonso and colleagues reported, in order "to conform to the dietary patterns and risk factors prevalent in the 1980s and 1990s."

The researchers obtained mortality data from national linkage records and death certificates, with an average follow-up of 161.6 months, or 13.4 years.

They found that only 18% of the participants had a diet that was above 80 in the index and those people had a 37% reduction in the risk of death, compared with those whose diets fell into the poor range.
Also:

• On average, the participants were 73.5 when they took part in the interviews and the average score on the eating index was 68.7.
• Within the groups, average scores were 85.3 for a good diet, 67.2 for a middling diet, and 43.5 for a poor diet.
• All told, there were 2,738 deaths, including 1,315 from cardiovascular causes.
• 62% of those with good diet died, compared with 71% of those in the middling group and 78% of those in the poor group. The differences were significant at P=0.001.
• For cardiovascular deaths, the rates were 33%, 34%, and 36%, respectively, and the differences remained significant at P=0.001.
• On a multivariate analysis, eating index scores were inversely associated with all-cause mortality (HR 0.991, 95% CI 0.988 to 0.994, P<0.001).
• Multivariate results were similar for cardiovascular death (HR 0.993, 95% CI 0.988 to 0.997, P=0.002).

The results are in accordance with broader studies suggesting that a good diet improves mortality outcomes, Afonso and colleagues argued.

"Despite a higher prevalence of comorbidities like hypertension, diabetes, smoking, coronary artery disease, and stroke, along with the advanced age in our study cohort, a good (Healthy Eating Index) score was found to reduce the risk of death," they noted.

The authors did not report any external support for the study. They did not make any financial disclosures, the journal said.

Primary source: Archives of Internal Medicine
Source reference:
Rathod AD, et al "Healthy eating index and mortality in a nationally representative elderly cohort" Arch Intern Med 2012; 172(3): 275-277.