Which kind of eating do you think will help you live a longer and healthier life: a diet of fresh food in its natural form or one based on artificial, processed, and refined ingredients? Yes, you’ve guessed right – eating as nature intended scores best in terms of health and longevity.
Take a look around a supermarket in the Western world and it’s easy to find thousands of products that are completely unrecognizable from their natural state – from chicken nuggets and frosted flakes to instant mash and spaghetti hoops. But these types of foods don’t feature in the traditional diets of those people living long and healthy lives, such as those in Japan or the Mediterranean. There, people are far more likely to “eat naturally” as a matter of course by choosing ingredients that are fresh, unprocessed, and have little, if anything, added to them. Put simply, it means they eat fresh fish rather than fish fingers, brown rice rather than white rice, and a home-made curry rather than a ready meal.
Long-lived communities farm organically
Most experts generally agree the priority for health is to eat a mainly plant-based diet that contains plenty of wholegrains, fruit, and veg – regardless of whether these are produced organically or not. But, most of the food eaten by people in long-lived communities is produced organically, avoiding artificial pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and antibiotics.
Most foods eaten in their natural form tend to be packed with health-giving fibre, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, but are low in health-sapping saturates, sugar, and salt – all nutritional qualities that are linked to longevity. These stand in direct contrast to many processed or refined foods, which are low in nutrients but loaded with trans fats, saturates, sugars, and salt.
58%
rise in fruit and vegetable
consumption when people
learn to cook meals
from scratch.
Many ready-made foods also include additives (flavours, colours, and preservatives). A good rule of thumb is: the more additives a product has, the more hidden fat, sugar, and salt it contains. So, steer clear of the processed products aisles and embrace shopping for, and cooking with, natural ingredients.
