June 10, 2024, Monday (HealthDay News) — A study published online in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition on June 10th found that a higher Planetary Health Diet Index (PHDI) is linked to a lower risk for both cause-specific and overall mortality.
The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston’s Linh P. Bui, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues created a PHDI to measure adherence to the EAT-Lancet reference diet. They then looked at correlations between PHDI and overall and cause-specific mortality in three prospective cohorts: 47,274 men from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, 92,438 women from the Nurses’ Health Study II, and 66,692 women from the Nurses’ Health Study. Every four years, the PHDI was determined using a semiquantitative dietary frequency questionnaire.
Over up to 34 years of follow-up, 31,330 fatalities among women and 23,206 deaths among men were recorded. When comparing the highest and lowest quintiles of PHDI, the researchers discovered that the pooled multivariable-adjusted hazard ratio for all-cause mortality was 0.77. The PHDI was linked to a decreased risk of dying from cancer, respiratory conditions, neurological illnesses, and cardiovascular disorders (hazard ratios, 0.86, 0.90, 0.53, and 0.72, respectively). In women, but not in males, the PHDI was also substantially linked to a decreased chance of dying from infectious diseases (hazard ratio, 0.62). PHDI scores were found to have inverse relationships with other environmental consequences including greenhouse gas emissions.
As more people follow the EAT-Lancet Commission’s recommended healthy and environmentally sustainable dietary pattern, the number of deaths from a range of diseases is expected to decline, according to the authors’ findings.
