If your Mama was anything like mine, you no doubt grew up with the constant admonition that “you are what you eat.” And despite the silly position of the AMA back in the early 1980s that there was no evidence to support the idea that diet has any direct relationship with health, almost all mothers know better. Thus it’s not entirely unexpected that medical science should be learning about the many ways that diet does indeed affect health, but it is welcome to wise Moms everywhere.

First up, a paper published in the journal Science by a research team at the University of Wisconsin demonstrates that simply reducing the amount of food eaten works to blunt the effects of aging and significantly delay onset of age-relatted conditions like cancer, diabetes, heart disease and brain atrophy. The research was conducted over 20 years on Rhesus monkeys at the National Primate Research Center at UW-Madison.

Conclusion? A restricted calorie diet will help you live longer and stay healthier.

The American Dietetic Association has also released an updated position paper on vegetarian diets that concludes a well-planned meatless diet is both healthful and nutritionally adequate and can help prevent or even treat chronic conditions like diabetes, obesity, cancer and heart disease.

Vegetarian diets have long been associated with lower blood cholesterol levels, lower risk of heart disease, lower blood pressure and reduced risk of type 2 diabetes. Because such diets are low-fat and generally provide more vitamins and minerals than a meat-based diet, the ADA has concluded that a meatless diet is appropriate for all stages of the human life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy and for athletes.

With ever increasing evidence that fewer calories, less meat and more fruits and vegetables can lead to a longer and healthier life, the number of vegetarians or semi-vegetarians among the population is expected to increase significantly over the next decade. Perhaps the most important take-away lesson from the evidence and research is that indulging in high-calorie processed foods and fatty meats to the point where a majority of the population weighs twice what they should weigh causes a huge chunk of the medical issues people suffer in the U.S.

The new Great Recession that became apparent last fall with the collapse of Wall Street and much of the world’s financial systems does not seem to be stemming the tide of obesity, and apparently much of the overall weight gain has occurred in just the past ~30+ years since the 1970s. We have heard about changes in diet to include more high fructose corn syrup instead of refined sugar in cheap snack foods and sodas, about more unhealthy fatty meats produced in factory farm intensives and fed unnatural diets, and we’ve seen the average size of a “single serving” meal at most fast food joints and restaurants practically double, contributing to people eating more and more of high-fat, high-calorie foods.

There has also been much said about increasing sedentary lifestyles, this lack of regular exercise contributing to the epidemic of obesity in children. But new research by associates of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention at Deaking University in Australia was presented to the European Congress on Obesity last week analyzing a variety of factors that show it really is all about how much we eat.

Increased Food Intake Alone Explains Rise in Obesity in U.S. tested 1,399 adults and 963 children to determine how many calories their bodies burn on a daily basis in normal living. Once this was determined, the researchers were able to calculate how much the individuals needed to eat in order to maintain a stable weight or growth curve in children. The bad news is that we’re eating a whole lot more calories than we burn, thus we get fatter and fatter.

It was determined that in order to get back to average individual weights of the 1970s, adults would have to consume about 500 fewer calories per day, children about 300 fewer calories. That may sound difficult until you realize that a single large hamburger averages 500 calories, and a small order of fries and medium soda amount to about 300. The same effect could be had if people got enough extra exercise to offset the increased calories, but it’s pretty obvious that’s not going to happen.

Professor Boyd Swinburn, the study’s leader, suggested to the WHO conference that while increased exercise should be encouraged for a range of benefits by public health agencies, more could likely be accomplished simply by programs that promote eating less.

In the year 2030, what’s left of us ‘Baby-Boomers’ will be in our late 70s and early 80s. We will not likely be the largest demographic bump in the general population at that time, as more than half of us will have died off by then. 2030 is also the year that researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, along with researchers at other institutions, project that 86% of Americans could be obese if current trends continue.

Worse, projections show that 96% of non-Hispanic black women and 91% of Mexican-American men will be in those numbers. The costs of this situation amount to nearly a trillion dollars’ worth of obesity-related health care spending, or 1 in every 6 health care dollars.

The projection is based on three decades’ worth of collected data from national surveys. As the obese population ages the health care costs related to being fat will more than double every decade. In addition to hypertension, heart disease and stroke, there is also the link between being overweight and type-2 diabetes. Not to mention the fact that obese children – an increasing problem – have a shorter life expectancy than healthy children.

Obesity and obesity-related diseases – particularly type-2 diabetes – are quickly increasing in all developed countries enjoying a ‘modern’ diet of junk food. Among the dietary factors associated with diabetes, sugar-sweetened and fruit beverages appear to be among the worst, possibly due to the amount of fructose in fruit juices and high-fructose corn syrup in soft drinks. Fructose more easily contributes to fatty tissue than other forms of sugar.

At the same time, research shows that actually eating fresh fruits and vegetables significantly reduces the chances of developing diabetes. Low-fat diets don’t seem to change the odds much, though significant weight loss itself does help reduce chances of developing diabetes.

Perhaps the best advice anyone could follow is simply not to get fat – or lose weight and get fit. Eat less, exercise more, eat more whole foods and less processed foods. Your body will thank you for it, and so will your pocketbook!