What We SHOULD Eat; Why We Don't

Two university health newsletters I read regularly recently covered interesting scientific reports.  One tells  how much produce you should eat daily in order to increase your life span.  The second concludes that obesity is primarily caused by too much consumption of  cheap food. Let's delve into the evidence and conclusions of both studies.

Produce and longevity:

Consider these results next time you're grocery shopping. The July 2014 Tufts University Health & Nutrition Letter  reported on the results of this British study of 65,000 adults who were followed for more than 7 years. The study found that there is a "robust association" between consumption of produce and all types of mortality, including cardiovascular and cancer risk.  Nothing new about the idea that fruits and vegetables are healthy, but the size of the positive impact of produce is impressive.

People who ate 7 or more servings of  fruits and/or vegetables daily benefited the most.  Compared to those who ate less than 1 serving, the high-produce eaters were 33% less likely to die of any cause during the follow-up period.  Furthermore, their risk of dying from cardiovascular disease was 31% lower and their cancer risk was 25% less.

Also worth noting from this study's findings:

• Benefits were slightly better with vegetable consumption than with fruit.
• Reduced mortality was associated with eating salad, fresh fruit and dried fruit. 
• Canned fruit was linked to increased mortality, perhaps because it's usually high in sugar.
• Frozen fruit, generally considered as nutritious as fresh fruit, was also associated with increased mortality, a surprising finding that may mean frozen food is "a marker for other dietary habits."
• Even participants who ate 1-3 portions of produce daily had a significantly lower risk of death than those who ate less than 1 portion.

In the summer, it's easy to consume a lot of fruit,  but this study strongly suggests that it's worth making the effort to keep at it  in winter, when, even when you can find summer fruits in stores, the quality isn't great and the price is high.

Obesity and Economics:

The University of California, Berkeley Wellness Letter  (in its September, 2014 issue) devoted just one paragraph to this paper published in CA: A Cancer Journal of Clinicians.  But Google led me to a slew of articles in major news organizations on the report.  First, let's look at the statistics: 

• "Americans are spending a smaller share of their income on food than any other society in history, yet get more for it," says CA: A Cancer Journal of Clinicians."
• Americans now spend, on average, less than 10% of disposable income on food.  That's down from 20% in the 1950's.  (However, lower-income Americans still spend about 1/3 of their  disposable income on food.)  In the 1930s, food gobbled up 1/4 of the disposable income  Americans.  By the 1950s, that figure had gone down to 1/5.
• The number  of calories consumed by Americans daily has risen about 20% in recent decades.

What's the connection between calories consumed and the percentage of income spent on food?  Overconsumption of sugary foods and other refined carbohydrates  (available inexpensively) are the main cause of the obesity epidemic that has become a big problem in the U.S., this report concludes. (We can probably buy a burger, fries, and shake at a fast food place for less than we'd pay for a bag of fresh cherries or a family-size carton of blueberries.) 

Yes, the authors did consider other factors that contribute to obesity, for example, the greater use of cars, the shift to jobs that involve less physical activity, and the tendency to entertain  ourselves with electronic devices rather than active, calorie-burning pastimes.  But they concluded that the evidence linking these factors to obesity was less strong than the association with cheap foods that are high in calories and carbohydrates.  According to  CBS News, the authors of this study came to their conclusion "after assessing findings of 75 prior papers and reports on lifestyle and public health."

Clearly, research data is telling us that, to enjoy a longer and slimmer life, we need to steer clear of  cheap burgers, fries, and shakes and munch on produce.  Of course, we knew that already, but it's good to see our assumptions so emphatically supported by scholarly evidence.  Now all we have to do is change our behavior, which, for some, requires increasing our income so we can pay for more fresh produce.

Source(s):

Tufts University Health & Nutrition Letter, "New Evidence Links Fruits and Vegetables to Longevity," July 2014.

CBS News,  "Is cheap food to blame for the obesity epidemic?"

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/is-cheap-food-to-blame-for-the-obesity-epidemic/

pressroom.cancer.org  "Review Says Inexpensive Food a Key Factor in Rising Obesity"

http://pressroom.cancer.org/sturmobesityeconomics (from the American Cancer Society) 

University of California, Berkeley Wellness Letter, "Wellness Facts," September 2014.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com  CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, "Obesity and Economic Environments"

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.3322/caac.21237/full