ED Elevator Pitch for Diet

G’day team — welcome back to Overheard in the Emergency Room. In this episode, we tackle the first Tier 1 intervention in our longevity blueprint: diet. If I had 30 seconds in the ED to give nutrition advice, what would I actually say? Not keto vs vegan. Not carb fear. Not clickbait. A repeatable pattern. We’ll use two ED cases (incidental NAFLD and severe hypertension) to make the stakes real, then zoom out to the best available evidence: dietary guidelines, short-term trials, and the world’s largest nutrition cohort studies. What you’ll learn: • Why a healthy diet is a pattern, not a religion • What the U.S., Australian, and heart-health guidelines consistently recommend • How nutrition evidence is built (mechanisms, trials, cohort studies) and why FFQ criticism is often misused online • How ultra-processed foods and the modern food environment sabotage good intentions • A tour of major cohort studies (NHS/HPFS, NIH-AARP, EPIC, UK Biobank, Million Women, China Kadoorie, JPHC, Adventist, PURE) • The 80/20 plate ‘elevator pitch’ and a 3-step plan you can start today Practical takeaways (TL;DR): • Aim for an 80/20 plate: mostly whole foods (especially plants), with room for real life. • Prioritize fiber and minimally processed foods; minimize ultra-processed calories when you can. • Swap red/processed meat more often for beans/lentils/tofu/fish/poultry depending on preference. • Create a ‘friction plan’ for busy days so healthy choices become the default.