'Western' Diet ?

Does Overall Diet in Midlife Predict Future Aging Phenotypes? A Cohort Study

'Western' Diet Doesn't Make for Healthy Seniors

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By Chris Kaiser, Cardiology Editor, MedPage Today

Published: April 17, 2013

Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco and Dorothy Caputo, MA, BSN, RN, Nurse Planner

Action Points

• A diet high in fried, sweet, and processed foods is not associated with ideal aging, defined as the absence of chronic diseases and mental health problems.
• The study found that a diet with high intake of vegetables, fruits, and fish (the "healthy-foods" diet) was significantly inversely associated with noncardiovascular mortality.

A diet high in fried, sweet, and processed foods is not associated with healthy aging, a large cohort study found.

Participants on a Western-style diet had lower odds of ideal aging, defined as the absence of chronic diseases and mental health problems, as well as good cardiometabolic, respiratory, musculoskeletal, and cognitive function, according to Tasnime Akbaraly, PhD, of INSERM in Montpellier, France, and colleagues.

The odds of participants in the Western diet group aging ideally were low (OR 0.58 for top tertile versus bottom tertile, 95% CI 0.36 to 0.94, P=0.02), researchers wrote in an early online release of a study in the May edition of the American Journal of Medicine.

Researchers characterized the Western diet as one consisting of fried food, processed food and red meat, pies, sweetened desserts, chocolates, refined grains, high-fat dairy products, and condiments./.../