Healthy eating for older adults Archive

The type and amount of fat, carbohydrate, sugar, and salt in our food supply has changed over the years — for better and for worse.

Remember when packaged foods emblazoned with the words "fat free" seemed to be everywhere? Then came labels boasting "zero grams of trans fat." "Sugar free" and "low sodium" claims soon joined the chorus. These days, gluten-free foods are all the rage.

For the most part, these food industry trends echoed the nutritional mantras of the time and were designed to improve our health — especially cardiovascular health. Not only is heart disease the nation's leading killer, there's overwhelming evidence that better dietary choices could prevent many heart attacks and strokes. But just how successful have these efforts been?

Research we're watching

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New research suggests that eating plenty of nitrate-rich vegetables — such as lettuce, spinach, and beets — may lower your risk of dying of a stroke or heart attack.

During digestion, your body converts nitrates into nitric oxide. This compound relaxes and widens blood vessels, which helps lower blood pressure. But does that translate to a longer life? To find out, researchers studied the diets of 1,226 older women who had no signs of fatty plaque in their arteries (atherosclerosis) and tracked them for 15 years.

Scientists used to think that brain connections developed at a rapid pace in the first few years of life, until you reached your mental peak in your early 20s. Your cognitive abilities would level off at around middle age, and then start to gradually decline. We now know this is not true. Instead, scientists now see the brain as continuously changing and developing across the entire life span. There is no period in life when the brain and its functions just hold steady. Some cognitive functions become weaker with age, while others actually improve.

Some brain areas, including the hippocampus, shrink in size. The myelin sheath that surrounds and protects nerve fibers wears down, which can slow the speed of communication between neurons. Some of the receptors on the surface of neurons that enable them to communicate with one another may not function as well as they once did. These changes can affect your ability to encode new information into your memory and retrieve information that's already in storage.