Research
Mixed
Maintaining a consistently high-quality diet over 12 years is associated with a lower risk of all-cause mortality compared to maintaining a consistently low-quality diet.
Aim to maintain a high-quality diet consistently over the long term. While improving your diet is beneficial, keeping your diet quality high over many years provides a significant protective effect against mortality. Focus on sustainable habits that you can maintain.
StrongSupportsHIGH confidence
Among participants who maintained a high-quality diet over a 12-year period, the risk of death from any cause was significantly lower... than the risk among participants with consistently low diet scores over time.
Why this rating
Same high-quality cohort data as N1, with consistent findings across three different dietary indices.
Source
Association of Changes in Diet Quality with Total and Cause-Specific Mortality
Mercedes Sotos‐Prieto et al. · New England Journal of Medicine · 2017
DOI 10.1056/nejmoa1613502
cohort · n=73739Cited 459×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Improving overall diet quality over a 12-year period significantly reduces the risk of all-cause mortality, with greater improvements yielding larger reductions in risk.Strong
- Improving diet quality over 12 years is associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease mortality, but not necessarily cancer mortality, depending on the dietary index used.Good
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This is one finding among thousands. Every one is graded and traced to its source, so you can see what the evidence actually supports. Browse the research →