Too often, healthcare professionals look to drugs to maintain metabolic health, a key factor in aging and chronic disease. But it’s what you eat that can cause — or prevent — these conditions from developing in the first place.

Researchers at the University of Sydney in Australia performed a study to determine whether drugs or what we eat have a greater effect on aging and chronic diseases such as diabetes. The research, which was published in the journal Cell Metabolism, builds on the team’s pioneering work on mice and humans that demonstrated how protective diet can be. However, lead researcher Professor Stephen Simpson noted that there is also a push to develop drugs that improve metabolic health and aging, without a person having to make dietary changes.

This complex mouse study involved 40 different treatments, each with varying levels of protein, fat, and carbohydrate balance, calories, and drug content. It was designed to examine the impact of three anti-aging drugs on the liver, which is a key organ in the regulation of metabolism.

The researchers found calorie intake and the balance of macronutrients (protein, fats, and carbohydrates) in the diet had a strong impact on the liver. Protein and total calorie intake had a particularly powerful effect not just on metabolic pathways, but also on fundamental processes that control the way our cells function. By comparison, the drugs mainly acted to dampen the cell’s metabolic responses to diet, rather than fundamentally reshaping them.

The study showed that “diet is powerful medicine,” according to Simpson. On the other hand, drugs are too often administered without considering whether or how they may interact with the metabolism of food.

This study is a strong argument that shows heart healthy eating, with an emphasis on lean proteins (such as fish), lots of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, fat-free dairy, and “good” fats, like olive oil, are a bigger payoff than drugs.