Eating to Break 100: Longevity Diet Tips

First the article says:

>The people who live in the Blue Zones — five regions in Europe, Latin America, Asia and the U.S. researchers have identified as having the highest concentrations of centenarians in the world — move their bodies a lot. They have social circles that reinforce healthy behaviors. They take time to de-stress. They're part of communities, often religious ones. And they're committed to their families.

Then it goes ahead and talks entirely about diet without bothering to show that diet has anything to do with long life at all...

I'm tired of media abusing and bullshitting people's health consciousness and wanting to know what to eat. I'm even more appalled at the scientists who have no idea how nutrition works. We're down to treating the body like a black box and resorting to laws of thermodynamics (aka calorie counting) or anecdotal knowledge of veggies are good cheesecake is bad. It is increasingly absurd in an era of synthesizing proteins designed to combat specific diseases that we can't tell people who want to eat healthy what to do with any scientific backing.

Aside from their diet, the other factor these communities all have in common is that they are isolated, either socially or geographically, or both. Which means that their gene pool is also isolated. Which means that if they happen to have mutations that lead to long life, those mutations are likely to persist locally.

The real question is, who wants to live to 100? I don't.

I was recently talking to my dad about my grandfather who lived to the ripe old age of 98. He was relatively healthy, mobile, and mentally sharp but the thing that seemed to bother him the most was a particular type of loneliness he was experiencing. The loneliness of not having those individuals in his life that he grew old with like my grandmother and childhood friends. Life without those you love and shared experiences with just doesn't seem worth it.

As with so many of these kinds of articles, it skips talking about what they don't eat: sugared drinks, refined carbs, industrially refined oils, factory farmed animal products, etc. etc.

Living healthily is really, really simple: if it comes in a packet, don't eat it!