Secret of staying fit and healthy is ditching the car and eating homemade meals

Standing on an overcrowded train clutching a packed lunch might seem like an unfortunate part of daily working life, but new research suggests it might actually be doing us some good.

The real secret of staying fit and healthy is ditching the car and eating homemade meals, three new studies have found.

Just simple lifestyle changes can have huge impacts of well-being, researchers discovered

According to Harvard University, eating 11 homemade lunches or dinners each week lowers the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes by 13 per cent.

Likewise people who used daily public transport instead of the car were 34 per cent less likely to have diabetes, 27 per cent less likely have high blood pressure and 44 per cent less likely to be overweight, Japanese scientists found.

A third study in Canada found that people who lived in neighbourhoods where they could easily walk to shops, rather than having to drive, were half as likely to have high blood pressure.

Taken together all the research suggests that even just a short walk to a bus or train stop can bring big health benefits. And swapping take-away and restaurant meals for home-cooked food is an easy way of keeping weight down and staying disease free.

To determine the benefits of home-cooked food, scientists at Harvard followed nearly 100,000 people for more than 36 years, monitoring their eating habits and weight gain.

None of the participants had diabetes, cardiovascular disease or cancer at the beginning of the study, but those who ate the most home-cooked food appeared to be protected from disease.

It is though that diabetes affects nearly four million people in Britain although around 850,000 are currently undiagnosed.

"The trend for eating commercially prepared meals in restaurants or as take-out has increased significantly over the last 50 years," said Dr Geng Zong, a research fellow at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts. "At the same time, Type 2 diabetes rates have also increased."

While researchers don't provide a specific number of homemade meals people should eat each week, Dr Zong said "more could be better."

Meanwhile scientists in Osaka Japan studied the commuting routes of more than 5,000 middle aged men and woman in the city.

Intriguingly they found that people who use the bus or train had even lower rates of diabetes, high blood pressure and weight gain than the walkers or bikers. The researchers suggest that one explanation could be that these commuters actually walked farther to and from the train or bus station than walkers or bikers travelled to and from work.

"If it takes longer than 20 minutes one-way to commute by walking or cycling, many people seem to take public transportation or a car in urban areas of Japan," said lead study author Dr Hisako Tsuji, director of the Moriguchi City Health Examination Centre in Osaka, Japan.