Life Skills, Episode 8: Food. A 5-minute plain-language lesson: fix the biggest leak first. Not about weight or calories - about what's linked to heart disease and early death. Poor diet is linked to ~11 million deaths a year (GBD 2017, Lancet 2019, modelled); the top factors are too much sodium (~3M), too few whole grains (~3M) and too little fruit (~2M), which overlap. PREDIMED (republished 2018): Mediterranean diet with extra olive oil or nuts, hazard ratio ~0.70 for major cardiovascular events in high-risk older adults (a relative number). Education adds only ~1/2 serving of fruit and vegetables a day (Jabbari 2024), so change the default at home. Three swaps: read sodium labels (US FDA: 5% DV low, 20% high), whole-grain versions of what you buy most, fruit bowl and nuts in view. Do this week: one default swap at home.