The latest nutritional recommendations

If you’re like me, you’re probably thinking, “What!? Another finding in nutrition?” But it’s always great to know that other people are trying to optimize the collective body of knowledge for our health. The latest evidence comes from data released Tuesday by the international Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (Pure) study. Its research team recorded the eating habits of 135,000 adults in 18 countries—including high-income, mediumincome and low-income nations—and followed the participants’ health for more than seven years on average. This study has also tracked the mortality (health and causes of death) of its subjects. As far as I know, this is one of the most comprehensive studies on health to date. Here is what they know:

- Among participants, those with the highest intake of dietary fat (35 percent of daily calories) were 23 percent less likely to have died during the study period than those with the lowest fat intake (10 percent of calories). The rates of various cardiovascular diseases were essentially the same across fat intake, while strokes were less common among those with a high fat intake. Keto fanatics, rejoice.

- Participants with the highest carbohydrate intake ( 77 percent of daily calories) were 28 percent more likely to have died than those with the lowest carbohydrate intake (46 percent of calories). Think about that every time you grab a pastry.

- Perhaps the most unnerving finding: participants, eating more fruits, and more seeds and beans, were associated with greater benefits than eating more vegetables. Guidelines also tend to stress that if eating some fruits and vegetables is good, more must be better. But among the study participants, those whose diets included three to four servings of fruits and vegetables a day were no more likely to have died as those whose diets included eight or more servings a day. So have your smoothies ready.

- A healthy diet based on the Pure results would be rich in fruits, beans, seeds, vegetables and fats, include dollops of whole grains, and be low in refined carbohydrates and sugars.

- It still makes sense to lower overall consumption of animal fat as the fat discussed in the study makes an emphasis on vegetable fat— think oils from coconut, olives and avocado.