A large U.S. study analyzing nearly 5,000 people linked diets built around plant-based foods to slower biological aging. That means it won’t slow the physical appearance of aging, but rather it slows your DNA’s level of decay.
It’s all based on what scientists call the epigenetic clock, a method that tracks chemical changes influencing how genes behave over time. Another way to think of it is like the rings you count to tell a tree’s age. We may look a certain age, and numerically we may be a certain age, but genetically, depending on a myriad of factors, including diet, we could be significantly older than we actually are, or much younger.
Researchers, who published their findings in the journal Aging, examined data from two major long-term health surveys and consistently found that people who ate more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and beans, along with eating fewer animal products, had noticeable signs of being biologically younger than their chronological age.
On an individual level, however, the difference wasn’t too dramatic, though it was measurable and repeated across multiple datasets and aging markers, meaning it’s a finding that was rigorously tested with the same result each time.
You might think that the study participants were a bunch of vegans or vegetarians, but they weren’t. They were just typical Americans with diets somewhere in the middle. They ate some meat, but also supplemented with a lot of vegetables and such. Researchers found that even just a modest shift in your diet by incorporating just a little bit more plant-based foods than usual was linked to slower aging.
‘Plant-Based’ Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Healthy
That said, the study did find that not all plant-based diets are created equal. Diets high in refined grains, sugar, and processed foods, which are all or can technically be plant-based, showed no benefit. In some cases, those fattier, ultra-processed diets were associated with faster aging, no matter how “plant-based” they were.
A big sticking point here, obviously, is the definition of “plant-based.” It’s a catchall term that, like a lot of terms in the American food industry, is poorly defined yet tossed around quite a bit, often with reckless abandon for the term’s actual meaning. The study, on the other hand, defined it clearly: it’s the quality of plans in your diet. Meaning, if not enough to just eat something plant-based. The fresher, the better.
As for why plant-based diets reduce age at the genetic level, it’s pretty simple, really: plant-based diets tend to be higher in fiber and antioxidants, and are collectively lower in compounds linked to inflammation, all stuff that we’ve long associated with better heart health and reduced disease risk.
The lesson here is that if you want to be one of those people who say things like “I don’t feel my age,” then help yourself make that true on a genetic level by eating more plants. It’s especially relevant since a completely different research team recently found that the rate at which your biological clock “ticks” may be a better predictor of your death than your actual numerical age.
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