Good diet helps the body function well in old age, new study finds

• Eating a diet rich in fruits, vegetables and dairy products appears to help maintain your ability to function normally as you age, a new study reports.
• Older people who consumed more of these foods had less risk of physical limitations, such as the inability to walk a quarter mile or climb 10 steps, which are often the first signs of disability.
• And those who ate the most fruits and vegetables had a lower risk of functional limitations nine years after they were initially evaluated, said study author Denise Houston, a research associate at Wake Forest University.
• The results are published in the February issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
• In their study, Houston and her team initially collected data on 9,404 healthy black and white men and women, 45 to 64 years of age.
• Those eating the highest amounts of dairy products and fruits and vegetables consumed two servings of dairy, three servings of fruit and three servings of vegetables a day.
• Houston believes that because fruits and vegetables contain high levels of antioxidants, they can help to prevent cellular damage associated with aging.
• "A diet that's higher in fruit and vegetables and dairy products does have effects other than on chronic conditions like cardiovascular disease and cancer," Houston added.
• Katz noted that living a healthy lifestyle may have influenced not just diet, but other practices related to risk of disability.
• "People who take care of themselves in one way tend to be people who take care of themselves in other ways, although attempts were made [by the researchers] to control for this," he said.