Also this week:
Special Report on Aging
Senior Athletes
Bill Phillips & Jack La Lanne: Exercise for maintaining youth
Health briefs
Web resources for healthy living after 50
What your doctor should look for in your regular checkups

Eat right for your age

Whether you're 25, 75 or in between, follow this guide for the latest advice on the best nourishment.

By Frappa Stout

The over-70 food pyramid

When you're 50, you don't act like a 20-year-old. So why eat like one?

True, some doctors maintain that good nutrition is good nutrition, regardless of age. In fact, the National Academy of Sciences' familiar Recommended Dietary Allowances (better known as RDA and last published a dozen years ago) divided adults over 24 into only two groups: under 50 and over 50.

But the ardent professors and dieticians we spoke to believe nutrition should be calibrated to take on the new health concerns that crop up with every decade of life. As we live longer and more data become available, we'll be able to plot our perfect diets well into our 90s.

But first, start with your 20s. This is when you lay the foundation for your future -- and good eating habits should be in the mix. You can follow the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Guide Pyramid, with its fruits and vegetables, grains, meats and dairy products, but tailor it to fit a young, developing body.

Bone health should be your No. 1 priority and calcium your best friend. At this age, you're still creating new bone, but soon "you're stuck with the bone you've got," says Keith Ayoob, associate professor of pediatrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and spokesman for the American Dietetic Association. Calcium helps build and maintain bone to prevent osteoporosis later, for both men and women.

Ayoob says dairy products are the way to go, even though some people fear their fat and calories. They're full of calcium, protein and vitamin D (needed to absorb the calcium). Plus, "they're easy, convenient, and everybody likes some form of them. It's a no-brainer," Ayoob says. You need three servings a day. Dairy isn't the only source: "Collard greens are loaded with calcium, but people don't eat them every day." So obey your thirst wit

h a glass of milk -- or, for something sweet, chocolate milk. Switch black coffee to a latte, or eat yogurt or cheese. Don't overdo the cheese, though; its saturated fat can lead to heart disease.

And yes, start thinking about heart disease in your 20s. Chronic diseases are often diet-related, and they start building up early. "By the time you get a chronic illness in your 50s," Ayoob says, "it's been brewing since your 20s."

The best way to get the jump on illness: Stick to heart-healthy, cancer-fighting fresh fruits and veggies for snacks. Sounds simple, but it means cutting out much of the insta-everything your generation has grown up with. Look for low-fat alternatives to fave snacks (think: white pizza, baked potato chips), and avoid food made with partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (doughnut alert!). Try a salad with your Mickey D's burger, and don't "supersize" anything. "People don't just get burgers anymore; they get a 12-pound thing smothered with bacon," Ayoob says. "We are victims of portion distortion." Create your own fast food: Throw some precut fruit and salad-in-a-bag in with your groceries. Then trade the pork rinds for flank steaks, skin your chicken and you're ready to rock.

Finally, don't fear eggs. "Eggs are back," Ayoob says. The American Heart Association now says four eggs a week are OK for almost everyone because the cholesterol you eat isn't a major player in coronary disease (the problem is blood cholesterol). Still, the heart association recommends keeping daily cholesterol intake below 300mg (an egg has about 213). "It's good news, especially for young people. Eggs are great little nutrition packages." Besides protein, vitamin D and other nutrients, eggs have lutein and zeaxanthine, two newly discovered antioxidants that reduce the risk of macular degeneration, a cause of age-related blindness.

Your nutrition needs won't change much between your 20s and your 30s, but your calorie needs might. You may end up thinking it's admirable to gain only a pound per year, but t

hat's 10 pounds by the time you hit 40. And think of the damage by the time you hit 70! Losing pounds becomes more daunting with each passing decade.

The solution? Pay attention to what you eat. Business lunches are great, but you can do without the high-calorie fare. Your spouse's pastime of snacking in front of the TV can be cute, but it replaces physical activity (and fills one up between meals). Spend your time together being active instead. If you're hitting the movies instead of the gym, tweak your menu accordingly. It's a good time to give up fatty takeout and start cooking at home with canola and olive oils. Some starch is good, but limit rice and pasta to 1 cup per meal.

And don't try to get all of your nutrients from a pill -- just go to the source, Ayoob says. "Food is powerful. There are [nutrients] in there we don't even know about." Yes, Power Bars are better than candy bars, but real food has more of the good, substantive stuff your body needs. Plus, quick-fix health foods are often nothing but simple egg, milk and soy proteins, at triple the price. "High tech doesn't mean better," Ayoob says. "It just means more complicated."

If you didn't get the weight thing under control in your 30s, you'll be sorry in your 40s, when a bulging midline is the last thing you need with your midlife crisis. But there's time to change. Here's how: Shrink your diet.

Your metabolism is slowing 3% a decade, so you do not burn as many calories as you used to. Wendy Sundquist, a dietician at Easton (Md.) Memorial Hospital, says, "We are burning off less with each decade, but some people are eating more. That means they're gaining weight."

For women, the threat of osteoporosis increases as childbirth and breast feeding siphon off calcium and as menopause nears. Both sexes need lots of calcium. If you don't like milk products, calcium-fortified orange juice and cereals can do the trick.

This is the time to step up cancer prevention by increasing antioxidant intake: Deeply colored fruits and vegetables are generally rich in antioxidants. Soy products also have been shown to reduce cancer risk; get them through tofu, soy milk or soy nuts. Soy margarine and daily wine consumption are the new weapons against heart disease. Sundquist recommends a multivitamin, too, to make sure you get the RDA for a variety of nutrients.

Your 50s are payback time -- time for your body to start getting back at you for all the abuse over the years. "If people have eaten terribly their whole lives, it catches up with them now," Sundquist says. "They will have pain in their legs, arthritis, shortness of breath, trouble moving."

But it's also an opportunity to revamp your diet. Most of us finally get concerned about heart disease and cancer at this age, Sundquist says, "but many don't change until they get scared or something happens." Changes for the good: Get more fiber by choosing whole-grain breads over refined whites and by loading up on broccoli, spinach, other green leafy vegetables and fruit. This not only packs in all-star antioxidants -- vitamins C, E and beta carotene -- but also fights constipation.

For women, the onset of menopause can make the body go haywire, but eating well and staying fit will lessen symptoms. Calcium is still a must, and soy products have been shown to reduce hot flashes.

In your 60s, your body starts to stand between you and good health -- even if you eat healthfully.

Your body doesn't absorb nutrients like it used to. But thanks to science, you can intervene. For instance: You require just as much calcium as when you were 30, but absorption is low. What's worse, many people become lactose intolerant as they age, making dairy foods the enemy. But you can take calcium supplements and eat lots of calcium-rich foods (like those collard greens you passed up in your 20s!), adding vitamin D to help your body absorb it. You should add D for another reason, too: This vitamin needs to be synthesized by the sun, and older people don't get as much sun exposure as the young.

In your 60s, anemia joins the list of hazards, so increase your intake of vitamin B12 (which is needed to produce red blood cells) by eating fortified breakfast cereals or by taking supplements. And because the threat of cancer never goes away, keep those richly colored vegetables and fruits coming.

Congratulations! Now that you're in your 70s, you're so special you need your own food pyramid, says Robert Russell, a Tufts University researcher. As associate director of the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center, he recently led a group of nutritionists in drawing a new pyramid for 70-plus people, who generally eat less. "When food intake [drops] below a critical level," he says, "you're not getting as many nutrients."

The pyramid recommends more nutrient-dense foods -- the darkest vegetables, the grainiest breads -- and a flag at the top signals elevated needs for calcium and vitamins B12 and D. Instead of starches at its base, Russell's pyramid has eight glasses of water, to remind folks in this group that they still need to drink at least that much fluid daily.

You may need to drop some things you grew up with: bacon-and-egg breakfasts, for instance. Why bother going low-fat at this late age? Russell points out that people are living longer and are always susceptible to disease. A 70-year-old has a lot of future to look forward to.

As for your 80s and 90s, all the above applies -- but specifics for these decades are a mystery. There's not much data out there on people past 80, but Russell suspects this is changing as we live longer. Until then, these lucky, long-lived folks can just be reckless and follow the 70-year-olds' diet.

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How many calories do you need?

For a rough idea, use this formula: weight x 15 (if you're fairly active)
or weight x 13 (if you're less active)

So a 150-pound exerciser might be able to eat 2,250 calories a day and not gain weight.