Are you eating for longevity? Take this quiz to find out. Eating healthy food can add years to your life. It can lower your odds of developing heart disease, cancer, dementia, and other chronic diseases. But how do you know if your diet is truly healthy? Are you eating the right foods and in the right amounts? Experts at the Mayo Clinic developed a survey called the Mini Eating Assessment Tool, or Mini-EAT, that can determine if you’re eating a healthy diet or not. A study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association found that how you answer the survey’s questions can provide an accurate picture of your diet’s overall state. We spoke to Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic who developed the survey, to learn more about it. Then we created a quiz based on the survey with his input. If you want to know if you’re on the right track, answer the following simple questions. If you find that you’re missing the mark, don’t worry. We’ve included science-backed advice to help you spruce up your meals so you can increase your odds of living a long and healthy life.
Quiz: How Healthy is Your Diet?
Vegetables:
- How many servings of vegetables do you eat per day? (Use the slider to mark your answer)
Fruits:
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Legumes:
- How many servings of legumes do you eat per day? (Use the slider to mark your answer)
Nuts and Seeds:
- How many servings of nuts and seeds do you eat per day? (Use the slider to mark your answer)
Seafood:
- How many servings of seafood do you eat per day? (Use the slider to mark your answer)
Whole Grains:
- How many servings of whole grains do you eat per day? (Use the slider to mark your answer)
Your Healthy Eating Plan
Congratulations! Whether you scored high or low (or somewhere in between), what matters is that by taking this quiz, you’ve identified where you can make improvements in your diet. Even small changes can have a big impact on your health and life expectancy. And it’s never too late to start. Studies show that no matter how old you are or where you’re at food-wise, you can gain sizable health benefits at any age by cutting back on highly processed foods loaded with salt, sugar, and other additives and replacing them with fruits, vegetables, nuts, beans, peas, lentils, seafood, and whole grains. We recommend bookmarking this page and checking back in three months to see how you’ve improved.
About this Story
Editing by Emily Codik and Theresa Tamkins. Copy editing by Grant Johnson. Graphics editing by Manuel Canales. Design editing by Christine Ashack. Design and development by Junne Joaquin Alcantara.
