EATING WELL IMPROVES HEALTH EVEN WITHOUT WEIGHT LOSS

People living with obesity don’t need reminding that, as a group, they have a higher risk of life-threatening health issues. It’s not that they don’t realize this; it’s that shedding extra pounds and keeping them off is far easier said than done. A study from Sweden’s Uppsala University explored what might be a more feasible way of reducing risks: adopting healthy eating habits (not to be confused with dieting, which is solely focused on losing weight and may not include meals with a balanced array of nutritious foods).

When the study began, its 79,003 participants had an average age of 61. To estimate the “healthiness” of each person’s usual eating habits, researchers assessed how closely daily meals resembled the traditional Mediterranean diet, which relies on fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, unrefined or high-fiber grains, fish, and olive oil.

During 21 years of follow-up, people who ate healthily but remained obese were no more likely to die than the healthy eaters whose weight was lower, though they still had a slightly elevated risk of dying specifically from heart-related causes. Meanwhile, people who weren’t obese but didn’t tend to eat well had an above-average risk of death. The takeaway: While body weight is one factor in health and life expectancy, it is far from the be-all and end-all.