This Harvard-backed diet makes you more than twice as likely to be healthy at 75
It’s 2025 and it seems like we still can’t reach a consensus on which diet — vegan, keto, Mediterranean — is “the best.” Experts say part of the problem is that what qualifies as “the best” or even “healthiest” depends on your personal goals.Are you looking to lose weight, build muscle, save the planet (and its animals) or reduce your risk of longterm chronic diseases?If your focus is to be healthy well into your 70s, one Harvard-backed diet recently won the top prize in a longitudinal study published in the journal Nature Medicine.Researchers analyzed the data of over 105,000 people aged 39-69 over the course of 30 years and found that those who strongly followed the Alternative Healthy Eating Index (AHEI) were 86% more likely to be healthy at 70 and more than twice as likely to be disease-free at the age of 75.
The AHEI was developed by Harvard T.H.Chan School of Public Health researchers as an alternative to the the Healthy Eating Index (HEI).
While they are similar in nature, the HEI was designed by the USDA to measure how well a diet stacks up to their dietary guidelines for Americans.The AHEI, on the other hand, is more focused on preventing chronic diseases like heart disease, cancer and diabetes.
In comparison to the HEI, the AHEI places more emphasis on healthy fats, nuts, and legumes — and it allows for moderate alcohol consumption.The diet also leans heavily on fruits, vegetables and whole grains while advocating for lower consumption of red and processed meats and sugar-sweetened beverages — both of which are bad for longterm heart health.
On its website, Harvard explicitly tells people who want to adhere to the AHEI to “focus on squeezing in extra servings of green leafy vegetables” — meaning ditch the potatoes and fries — and “avoid fruit juice, because drinking too much might actually increase your risk of diabetes.”They also advocate for minimizing refined grains in favor of whole grains like brown rice and q...