Eating Cheese And Fruit May Actually Help You Age Better, According To A Recent Study

People with better mental well-being tend to be healthier and live longer, a genetic analysis has found.

Certain activities and lifestyle choices, such as eating cheese and fruit, could play a significant role in that effect, helping you age better.

Researchers in China analyzed the genes of individuals across eight datasets to determine if mental well-being correlated to healthier aging. Each dataset contained information on 800,000 to 2.3 million people.

“To achieve healthy aging, it is imperative to bridge the gap between health quality and lifespan. Mental well-being, which encompasses emotional, psychological, and social well-being, correlates with multitudinous lifestyle behaviors and morbidities and underpins healthy aging,” wrote the researchers.

Then, they narrowed in on 33 individuals from the datasets and found that better mental well-being led to improved resilience, longevity, and higher rates of health, regardless of a person’s financial status. However, more wealth and a higher level of education did have an impact on mental well-being.

Additionally, a lack of exercise, watching too much TV, and smoking were associated with poorer well-being, while eating cheese and fruit was linked to enhanced well-being.

“We found that lifestyle factors such as sedentary behavior (that is, TV watching time), smoking (that is, age of smoking initiation and cigarettes per day), and dietary intakes of cheese and fresh fruit, as well as behaviors and performances such as medication use (that is, antihypertensive medication and NSAIDs), cognitive performance and age at menarche, each mediated 1.82 percent to 9.54 percent of the total effect of the well-being spectrum on [healthiness of aging],” wrote the researchers.

Of all the 33 individuals, those who reported eating more cheese and fruit tended to score higher in mental well-being.

Eating more cheese had a 3.67 percent positive impact on their health and their lifespans, while eating fruit had a 1.96 percent positive impact.

Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.