Indulging in your guilty pleasures could be the key to a long life
Everyone has a particular food they could class as a guilty pleasure. Be it a double cream French brie or a good bottle of shiraz, whatever your guilty pleasure is, we can all agree on two things: it’s to be eaten in moderation, and you usually feel a little bad about indulging in it.
However, thanks to new research and many different teams of dedicated scientists, we can confirm you no longer need to feel guilty for indulging in the foods and beverages you love. In fact, we encourage you to do it, because it turns out indulging in your guilty pleasures could be the key to living a longer, happier life. Read on to find out why.
A recent study by the University of Alberta has found that drinking one glass of red wine can improve heart and muscle strength as much as one hour at the gym, thanks to the compound resveratrol which is found in red wine.
In 2013 a UK study by the University of Reading found that drinking between one to three glasses of champagne a week can reduce your risk of memory loss and dementia. The presence of particular compounds in the sparkling beverage gives it the ability to delay the development of brain disorders and encourage the good proteins in our brain which usually decrease as we age.
According to research undertaken by Harvard University, chocolate, or hot cocoa in particular, can help boost the blood supply to the brain ad increase your memory functions. Chocolate in general has also been found to have a lowering effect on blood pressure.
Research conducted by the University of Eastern Finland has found that men who consumed fermented dairy products, such as yoghurt and cheese, were at smaller risk of coronary heart disease than those who ate minimal amounts.
Furthermore, A study conducted by Polish researcher Maciej Banach and his team, which spanned from 1999 to 2010 and surveyed 24, 474 adults, found that people who ate cheese had an 8 per cent lower risk of mortality. Another meta-analysis conducted by Banach of 12 additional studies confirmed these findings.
For a long time the food additive MSG, which is most often found in Chinese food and other Asian dishes, has been considered bad for our health. However, The Food Authority NSW officially reports that “Numerous international scientific assessments have been conducted, involving hundreds of studies. None of these have conclusively linked MSG to asthma or ‘Chinese Restaurant Syndrome’.”
And last but certainly not least, The Harvard School of Public Health discovered that coffee drinkers could lower their mortality risk by six per cent simply by drinking a cup of coffee per day. The study also found that the more you drink the longer you could live, with those who drank up to five cups per day reducing their mortality risk by 15 per cent.
So there you are. Go forth and indulge in cheese, wine, chocolate, Chinese food and coffee and don’t you date feel bad for doing it!
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