I’d never even heard that nuts and seeds were so essential to a long and disability free life.  To prevent heart disease, it outranked being a couch potato, and eating enough fruit, vegetables, and whole grains!  And it was 8th in importance for overall prevention of death and disability.  So always add some Super Seed Mix to whatever you’re cooking.

Disability-adjusted life year (DALY). One DALY is equal to one year of healthy life lost.

Recently The Lancet published The Global Burden of Disease Study 2010, the largest ever effort to describe the global distribution and causes of a wide array of major diseases, injuries, and health risk factors. The results show that infectious diseases, maternal and child illness, and malnutrition now cause fewer deaths and less illness than they did twenty years ago. As a result, fewer children are dying every year, but more young and middle-aged adults are dying and suffering from disease and injury, as non-communicable diseases, such as cancer and heart disease, become the dominant causes of death and disability worldwide. Since 1970, men and women worldwide have gained slightly more than ten years of life expectancy overall, but they spend more years living with injury and illness.

Much of the study puts the causes and risks of death and how many years of low quality of life into a unit combining them both: the Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALY):

DALY = years of life lost to premature death + years lived with disability.

The chart below is for only heart disease, the #1 killer in North America. Notice that in terms of diet:

• The most important dietary factor is a diet low in nuts and seeds – this is even more important than being a couch potato!
• Diets low in fruit, seafood (omega-3 varieties), whole grains, and vegetables are more likely to lead to a bad outcome!

Here’s a longer list sorted by most to least DALY in North America.  I’ve highlighted the dietary risks in red:

And now the most common causes of death and disability loss.  I was struck by the high number of mental disorders:

Sometimes it’s easier to read a chart than numbers.  Below is the GLOBAL (not North America) top 20 burden of disease risk factors in 2010 to put this in perspective (expressed as a percentage of DALY):