You're doing the weekend shop and you’re walking the same aisles you usually do. There are a few cans of something fizzy, sliced ham for the week's sandwiches, and a couple of ready meals for the nights you’re home late and don’t want to cook.
Those 3 are the ones the research points at avoiding.
A National Cancer Institute study in PLOS Medicine last month followed 461,682 adults for about 19 years. People who replaced 10% of their ultra-processed food with whole food had 2% less bowel cancer.
That’s a small gain, because it counts swapping any ultra-processed food, including the ones that do no harm. Swap the 3 foods that carry the risk and the numbers get bigger, as you’ll see below.
The list of what to buy instead is in the image, ready to save.
1. What to drink instead
Swap soda, regular or diet, for sparkling water, unsweetened tea or coffee.
In 25,639 British adults, swapping 1 soft drink a day for water or unsweetened tea or coffee went with 14% less type 2 diabetes. Swapping it for a diet drink made no difference.
In 80,647 women and 37,716 men, each sugary drink a day went with a 7% higher risk of dying. At the highest intakes, diet drinks were linked to more deaths among the women and showed no link among the men.
What to buy: plain sparkling water and a bag of lemons or limes, tea to brew and chill, and coffee. If you miss the sweetness, a splash of juice in sparkling water has a fraction of the sugar in a soda.
2. What to have for lunch instead
If lunch is usually a deli-meat sandwich, you don't have to give up the sandwich. Pick whichever of these is the least effort for you.
Keep the sandwich and cook the meat yourself. Sliced roast chicken breast, pork or beef. Roast it on Sunday, slice it cold, and it does the job ham does through to Wednesday or Thursday.
Keep the sandwich and change the filling. Hummus with salad, egg, or canned tuna or salmon.
Have a bowl some days. Beans or lentils, rice or quinoa and salad, with whatever is left from dinner on top.
A review of 24 long-term studies looked at what happens when processed meat is replaced. With beans and lentils in its place there was 23% less heart disease, and with nuts there was 27% less heart disease and a 21% lower risk of dying. The review only tested plant swaps, so the hummus and the bean bowl have numbers behind them. Home-roasted meat wasn't tested, but it's safe to say that swapping packaged meat for home-cooked protein is a healthy trade to make.
What to buy: a chicken or a small cut of pork or beef to roast, a tub of hummus, canned beans or lentils (rinse them), rice and salad.
How long it keeps. These are the US government's fridge times, for a fridge at 40°F (4°C) or colder.
Roast chicken, pork or beef: 3 to 4 days in the fridge. Slice what you won't eat by Thursday and freeze it, where it keeps for 2 to 6 months.
Cooked rice, quinoa, beans and lentils: 3 to 4 days, the same as any cooked leftover. Get them into the fridge within 2 hours of cooking.
Canned beans, lentils and fish: fine in the pantry until you open them, then 3 to 4 days in the fridge, tipped out of the can into a container.
Hard-boiled eggs: 1 week.
So one roast and one pot of rice or beans on Sunday covers lunch to midweek, and a second small cook or a can gets you to Friday.
3. What to do about ready meals
Make your own by cooking double. In a UK study of 11,396 adults, people who ate a home-cooked dinner more than 5 times a week ate about 2oz (62g) more fruit and 3.5oz (98g) more vegetables a day than people who did it less than 3 times. They were also 28% less likely to be overweight.
Nothing new to buy for this one. Double the recipe twice a week, freeze half flat in portions and write the date on it. Frozen leftovers are at their best within 3 to 4 months.
Your Weekend Action
Here's the whole thing for this weekend's shop.
Leave the soda on the shelf and put sparkling water and lemons in the cart.
Skip the deli counter this week and buy something to roast and slice.
Cook Sunday's dinner double and freeze half in portions.
Give it 2 weeks and see how your energy holds up mid-afternoon. If you have a blood pressure cuff or a scale, take a reading at the start and another at the end.
One caveat. Every number here comes from watching what people already eat, and people who drink water and cook at home differ in plenty of other ways. 20-year diet studies are hard to run, but the swaps cost little and the studies we do have all lean the same way, so they're worth making.
For the rest of the cart, the Whole Food Swaps guide has a like-for-like replacement for each of the common packaged foods, with what to look for on the label.
The Week in Longevity
Five studies worth 30 seconds each.
01 · HABITS
9,920 adults in Singapore were scored on weight, smoking, activity, diet and screen time, then followed for 14 years.
The lowest scorers had about twice the risk of a heart attack and of dying, and about 3 times the risk of a stroke, compared with the highest. There was no link with cancer. Observational. Read the study →
02 · BRAIN
5,225 British civil servants, average age 69, had stored blood tested for 5 dementia markers and were followed for 12 years. 516 developed dementia.
People in the worst quarter for the strongest marker, p-tau217, had nearly 4 times the risk. The tests still missed around half of future cases and did about as well as age, habits and health history combined. Only 27% of participants were women. Read the study →
03 · MUSCLE
3,033 Australians aged 20 to 96, about half of them women, had repeat body scans over roughly 17 years.
Inactivity and smoking went with less muscle in the arms and legs, and more calcium from food went with more of it. Observational, so it shows links only. Read the study →
04 · SLEEP
Adults with insomnia symptoms were randomized to a 6-week self-guided app that teaches sleep behavior changes, a mood-focused app, both, or health information.
The sleep app improved insomnia more than health information at 6 weeks and still at 26 weeks. Mood improved at 6 weeks too, though that had faded by 26. A secondary analysis, so it needs repeating. Read the study →
05 · NUTRITION
1,636 Americans in the Health and Retirement Study had their diet scored in 2013, frailty measured in 2016 and thinking tested through 2022.
Higher diet scores went with less physical frailty. They didn't predict who went on to develop cognitive impairment. Read the study →
Which swap are you trying this weekend? Hit reply and tell us. We read every one.
Monday Preview
Food is one of the foundations, and next week is about what comes after them. We're going through the extras people ask us about most: sauna, red light, meditation and breathwork, pills like NMN and rapamycin, and clinic treatments like plasma exchange, stem cells and hyperbaric oxygen. For each one we'll look at how much it adds once the basics are in place. It'll look a little different from a normal week.
Until Monday.
Longevity Daily / The Building Decades
P.S. Shopping with someone this weekend? Forward them the list. The Whole Food Swaps guide covers the rest of the cart. And tell us what you thought of this week in the poll below.