Eating for a Long Life: WebMD’s 13 Tips

WebMD presents a good summary of what foods you need to eat to live a longer and better life. (Olive oil clears fat from blood vessels?)

MY HAT off to WebMD for their “Eating for a Long Life” sideshow.

This cogent presentation of 13 slides (one a commercial that bears review for what not to consume), brings together in one place a summary of various posts that echo what I’ve written about on this blog — How eating the right food can be the best prescription for living a long and strong life.

Here’s a quick summary, but go to the slide show for more information and the full flavor of the presentation (link below):

1. Antioxidant Foods Enhance Longevity – five-plus servings of colorful fruits and veggies each day.
2. Olive Oil is Healthy – can actually clear fat from blood vessel walls.  Choose double virgin, cold pressed contained in a non-clear glass bottle.
3. Berries – a good source of antioxidants and compounds that may help fight cancer and degenerative diseases of the brain.
4. Fish, the Brain Food – its fatty acids are beneficial to the brain and nervous system, and may lower the risks of dementia. (Watch the video at the bottom of: Detoxifying Your Way to Nirvana.  Make sure you eat the “right” tuna: The Right Tuna for You and the Ocean. Finally, learn about which fish has the most mercury here.)
5. Beans for Fiber – Get full faster, eat fewer calories and the fiber can help lower blood pressure, prevent constipation, cholesterol and digestion.
6. Veggies are Valuable to Health – For instance, eat 10+ servings of tomato products each week can reduce the risk of prostate cancer by 35%.
7. Greek Diet – Eat like the Greeks, the “Mediterranean Diet”, helps the heart, memory and cancer profile.
8. Nutty Nutrition – This is cholesterol-free protein and other nutrients.
9. Diary Goodness – Get all that Vitamin-D from diary is the claim, but here I demur a bit.  Many people don’t digest diary very well, and Vitamin D is better gotten from sun exposure of Vitamin D3.  Read what Dr. Weil’s comments about diary (and soy, vitamin D, soda, etc.) at Dr. Weil and Kevin Rose Talk Health.
10. A WebMD sponsor’s commercial, a nutritional energy drink. Go to the Dr. Weil link above and get his take on energy drinks.  Personally, I think there’s more garbage than good stuff in most of them.
11. Whole Grain Goodness – Yeah, lot better than processed white flour, but be careful to choose the dark, whole wheat stuff, not the disguised white flour wannabe.
12. Lose Weight – For every reason under the Sun.
13. Maintain Good Weight – A nuance of #12, but the focus here is on recognizing that as we age, we tend to add weight because we become less active, and lose muscle mass (lean body tissue) which requires more energy (calories) to maintain.

Don’t stop here… go to the WebMD slide show, and look around for the other good tips at that site.

Last Updated on April 11, 2023 by Joe Garma