Brimming with the sense of invincibility that imbues twentysomethings, I once thought little of dining on kebabs and burgers. A decade or so later, I have changed my tune, acutely aware of the need to take the ageing process more seriously.
The foundations for a healthy life are laid down during childhood and adolescence. But rather than being written in stone, evidence is increasingly showing that our nutritional needs continue to change with every passing decade.
In particular, from 40 onwards, our diet needs to be fine-tuned to support the changing needs of our body. “Every single bite or calorie has to work harder,” says , a research nutritionist at Trinity College Dublin. And just eating a healthier diet may not be enough – there are specific nutrients that must be consciously targeted as you head into midlife and beyond. So, here’s how to turbocharge your diet throughout adulthood – and the earlier you start, the greater the rewards, with the potential to add a decade to your life.
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Our bodies are far better at coping with a subpar diet in early adulthood. In our twenties and thirties, we have more lean muscle, which , and our organs are at their most robust at clearing away toxins.
But as the years go by, these finely tuned systems begin to wane. Our mitochondria – the bean-shaped batteries within our cells responsible for turning food into energy – . The gastrointestinal tract becomes less adept at absorbing crucial vitamins and minerals, and we become more and accumulating problematic “visceral” fat around organs and deep in the abdominal cavity.
“Visceral fat is the underlying cause of chronic inflammation, which is a root cause of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and even some cancers,” says , who specialises in nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
To mitigate these changes, diet takes on ever greater importance. “To counter inflammation, you need anti-inflammatory nutrients,” says Hu. “We know some nutrients – such as omega-3s, high amounts of fibre and certain minerals like potassium and magnesium – have anti-inflammatory properties.”
This can have a massive impact, as demonstrated in studies that follow people’s health over many decades. For instance, last year, Hu, together with at the University of Montreal, Canada, and their colleagues, analysed data from more than 100,000 adults over the course of 30 years to uncover the dietary patterns associated with healthy ageing. They found that what you eat at 40 is . Those who ate the most fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts and healthy fats were far more likely to be faring better at age 70, both physically and mentally, than those whose diets contained lots of sugary drinks, saturated fats and red or processed meat.
Likewise, a 2024 study led by at the University of Bergen, Norway, modelled how dietary changes in adulthood might affect longevity using data from seven countries, including the UK and the US. This found that if people aged 40 started eating more whole grains, legumes and nuts, while also consuming less sugary food and drinks and less red and processed meat, their by anywhere from six years to almost a decade.
“You need to be thinking about improving your diet and lifestyle… ideally by 40,” says gut scientist at University College Cork in Ireland. However, it’s never too late. Fadnes’s modelling studies show that even those aged 60-plus could gain extra years by adopting healthier eating habits.
But it isn’t just the cumulative effect of healthy eating over the years that counts. Physiological changes during adulthood mean that, with every passing decade, our diet and the nutrients it provides take on increasing importance.
This is because, from our fifties onwards, our body’s requirements for practically everything go up – from protein and fibre to . Take calcium, for example. Assuming a daily consumption of 2500 calories, a 19-year-old man requires around 921 milligrams of calcium, but a 70-year-old needs 1573 mg and a 90-year-old could do with 1696 mg.
Likewise, while a 19-year-old woman consuming 2000 calories per day requires about 70 mg of vitamin C, a 51-year-old needs 82 mg and a 70-year-old requires 101 mg. Failing to meet these increasing requirements can lead to the development of multiple micronutrient deficiencies and the onset of frailty, say O’Connor.
At the same time, our appetite tends to decline over time, meaning many over-65s end up eating less overall. One explanation is that our metabolism – the rate at which our bodies burn energy – around the time of our 60th birthday (see chart below), having remained stable throughout our adult lives. This means that, to achieve optimal health, there is less and less space for lower-quality foods.
“You actually need to get more [nutrients] from what you’re eating [in later life], because your appetite decreases,” says O’Connor. “You have to pack in the same or greater nutritional load into a smaller volume of food.”
So, how do we go about achieving that? If you are going to make one dietary change in your middle years, there is a reasonable case to be made for eating more whole grains, a group of foods that includes brown rice, oats, whole wheat and quinoa.
A key reason why is their high fibre content. “Globally, inadequate fibre consumption, driven largely by low intakes of whole grains, is among the leading dietary contributors to disease burden and premature mortality,” says Tessier.
While fibre-rich diets are , from stroke and coronary events to colorectal cancer, studies show that almost all of us – from to the – fall far short of the recommended intake.
Consuming more fibre helps maintain the health of both our gut microbiome and, in turn, our immune system. In at least some of these cases, this has been directly linked to a . The benefits of maintaining a healthy gut microbiome may be related to the gut’s role in synthesising vital micronutrients for physical and mental health, such as B vitamins, and converting chemicals from plant foods into useful substances.
Again, making a change in midlife appears to be key. A 2025 study of more than 47,000 women in the US who took part in the Nurses’ Health Study found that those who in their forties were more likely to stay healthier into their seventies, eighties and beyond.
In Hu’s opinion, the biggest issue with heavily processed foods is that they are typically depleted of fibre, as well as lacking in a number of key vitamins and minerals. He points to minerals like zinc and magnesium, found in many whole grains, nuts, seeds and legumes, which can negate underlying changes that begin to play out in the body through midlife and beyond.
For example, these two micronutrients can help the body to , with too little magnesium in particular being linked to the development of insulin resistance – where the body’s cells become insensitive to the hormone and have trouble absorbing sugar from the bloodstream. This is associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, says Hu. “That’s why we need to eat a diet rich in magnesium.”
Other shifts happen to our bodies in midlife, with the first wave characterised by a declining ability to metabolise fats, alcohol and caffeine. The second wave includes a diminished ability to process carbohydrates and declining kidney and immune function, with the latter change potentially explaining the increased levels of chronic inflammation that occur with age. Likewise, another study from last year, which examined signalling patterns between brain regions, found that between the ages of 44 and 67, perhaps driven by insulin resistance, which impairs the ability of neurons to use sugars as an energy source.
Again, certain minerals may help. Hu points to selenium, which has been shown to be beneficial for both the brain and the immune system, rather than promoting it. Your required selenium can be obtained through snacking on just one or two Brazil nuts per day.
Menopause nutrition transition
Another key nutritional crunch point comes during perimenopause, the transitional stage before menopause where the production of hormones like progesterone and oestrogen begins to decrease. So, to prevent deteriorating bone quality, fractures and osteoporosis in later life, there may also be a preventative role for dietary calcium.
“The menopause transition completely transforms the nutritional landscape,” says O’Connor. “The decline of oestrogen means that bone tissue is being broken down faster than it’s being replaced. So your calcium requirements go up, while your body’s ability to absorb calcium efficiently is declining at the same time.”
Research suggests that in their forties, and after the age of 50 they should aim to consume 1000 to 1200 mg per day. Calcium-rich foods aren’t just confined to dairy products – they include vegetables such as broccoli (containing 112 mg of calcium per 120-gram serving) and canned sardines (240 mg of calcium per 60-gram serving).
Around the same time of life, everyone needs to start becoming wary of dwindling reserves of vitamin D, a micronutrient that is also vital for the immune system and bone health. Without it, the body can absorb only 10 to 15 per cent of the dietary calcium we consume.
We get a large proportion of our vitamin D from the sun’s ultraviolet rays, but even the most ardent sun worshippers find it steadily harder to acquire enough vitamin D as they age. This is because the ageing skin at converting sun exposure into usable vitamin D, while the small intestine’s ability to absorb the amounts of it present in dietary sources like fatty fish and egg yolks .
As we get older, we also need to be taking in more protein, although there are certain nuances to this.
Protein boost?
Over time, our bodies become less efficient at turning dietary protein into new muscle tissue, a biological process known as anabolic resistance. This has led various researchers to argue that we need to respond by consuming more protein in our later decades to prevent weakness and loss of independence. The UK’s National Health Service recommends that a typical adult consume 0.75 g of protein per kilogram of body weight each day. For someone weighing 75 kilograms, that works out to 56 g of protein a day, or roughly the amount in one chicken breast. However, some researchers have suggested that a daily intake of between 1.2 and 1.6 g per kg of body weight , combined with strength training, to support muscle maintenance as we age.
Yet it increasingly appears that it isn’t just the amount of protein that might be crucial, but the type too. Earlier this year, , a nutrition researcher at the University of Sydney, Australia, and her colleagues carried out a study where 104 people aged between 65 and 75 were assigned to one of four different diets over the course of a month, with their biological age calculated before and after based on 20 different biomarkers in the blood. The results revealed that those who cut back on dietary fat or reduced their intake of animal protein in favour of more plant-based protein sources .
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There are likely to be a number of reasons why. Processed meats, for example, are notoriously high in sodium, which may accelerate kidney ageing. “Excess sodium raises blood pressure and can burden the kidneys,” says Tessier. “As kidney function naturally declines with age, limiting these dietary stressors may be especially important from midlife onward.”
Andrews also points to the composition of meat, combined with the general need to cook it, both of which can exacerbate underlying ageing processes. Red meat is not only high in saturated fat, which has been shown to , but we often like to grill or barbecue it, cooking methods based around dry heat. These drive the , toxins that are thought to .
But we don’t necessarily need to cut out animal protein entirely. Instead, shifting the balance . “In the US, the typical animal protein to plant protein ratio in most diets is 2:1,” says Hu. “What we’ve found is that if you can change it to [close to] 1:1, you have improved cardiometabolic health and decreased risk of heart attacks.”
Hu thinks that increasing not only plant proteins in our diet, but fatty fish too, is the healthiest way to meet the body’s greater protein requirements in later life. Seafood has emerged as a topic of increasing interest to ageing researchers, as it delivers high concentrations of omega-3s – healthy fats that appear to play a role in preserving muscle health.
Consuming 1 g of omega-3s per day – equivalent to a single mackerel or two salmon fillets – for several months has been shown to . Higher doses might be even more beneficial. at King’s College London, who specialises in exercise metabolism and nutrition, and his colleagues have shown that high doses of omega-3s – between 2 and 5 g per day for a short period of time – can even . These nutrients have a particularly potent role to play in over-50s who have begun losing muscle tissue, he says, because they seem to within protein. “I think the positive effects of omega-3s on muscle are likely more pronounced in older versus younger adults,” says Witard.
Should you supplement?
But not everyone likes fatty fish, and eating enough of it to get sufficient omega-3s into the body isn’t always easy. So, could supplements play a role? This is a key question, but – as with many questions around supplements – one that isn’t straightforward to answer.
Because our requirements for different micronutrients increase as we get older, , a physician and head of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Massachusetts, believes there is a role for multivitamin and multimineral supplements in the over-60s.
Manson led the COSMOS-Web study, one of the few large-scale randomised controlled trials of supplements, which followed 3562 older adults in the US. In 2023, it found that daily multivitamin use could and improve various other measures of cognitive function in this population.
The positive outcomes could mainly be down to multivitamins and multiminerals rectifying dietary deficiencies. Manson also warns that supplements have their limitations and people shouldn’t rely on them at the expense of eating well. “They act as a form of insurance to ensure adequate intake of these individual vitamins and minerals, because of this problem with decreased absorption and increased requirements at older ages,” she says. “But you’re not going to achieve optimal health by throwing a multivitamin at an unhealthy lifestyle.”
So while some supplements may help, the evidence points to the importance of ensuring that your diet is ever more nutritious as you pass through the decades.
As someone who has always craved fattier foods, snacks and takeaway meals, my own diet has undergone a rather drastic shift over the past three years. As the milestone of my 40th birthday draws ever closer, I have realised that, from now on, it’s time to double down on good nutrition and give my body a helping hand.
