Interested in eating the healthiest-possible diet? Good luck. There are so many diets out there, including multiple variations on each diet, that it’s nearly impossible to pick the best one. The popular Mediterranean diet, for example, includes at least eight spin-offs.
Yet identifying best diets is an important national health goal. That’s why the National Cancer Institute launched a program call the Dietary Patterns Methods Project. Its goal: Establish links between various diets (rather than individual nutrients) and mortality rates in three large U.S. population databases.
The first paper from the project has just been published in the Journal of Nutrition. It followed 424,000 subjects for 15 years. Subjects had an average age of 62 at the study's beginning, with 86,000 dying during the 15-year period. Death rates were then correlated with four well-defined dietary patterns selected by the investigators.
All four diets followed a similar pattern, recommending consumption of whole grains, vegetables, fruit, and plant proteins. And all four proved more or less equally effective for decreasing cardiovascular, cancer, and all-cause mortality rates by 12 to 28 percent when compared to less-healthy diets. “All four diet quality indexes that we examined showed similar associations with mortality,” the research team notes.
They differ slightly in the degree to which they favor, or disfavor, certain foods and food types, such as the following:
- The Healthy Eating Index 2010: Considers low-fat dairy products a plus.
- The Alternative Healthy Eating Index 2010: Considers nuts/legumes a plus, as well as moderate alcohol consumption. Trans fats, sugary beverages, salt, and red meat get a minus.
- The Alternate Mediterranean Diet: Considers fish, nuts/legumes, and moderate alcohol a plus; red meat, a minus.
- The DASH Diet: Considers low-fat dairy and nuts/legumes a plus; sugary beverages, salt, and red meat get a minus.
As an indication of how closely the four diets tracked each other, here are the mortality hazard ratios for men and women when comparing those who scored highest on each diet index vs. those who scored lowest. A lower ratio indicates a decreased mortality risk.
Men: HEI 2010, .78; aHEI 2010, .76; aMED, .77; DASH, .83.
Women: HEI 2010, .77; aHEI 2010, .76; aMED, .76; DASH, .78.
The authors believe that their study is the first to compare various diets within the same large U.S. population databases. Previously, different diet definitions and different population databases made comparisons difficult to summarize.
The take-home message is simple and clear. It doesn't matter much what name-brand diet you follow, so long as the diet emphasizes the basics: whole grains, vegetables, fruit, and plant proteins. Pick whatever works for you, and stick with it.