What to Eat if You Want to Live to Be 100
This is just anecdotal, I know, but let the record note that my grandmother has made it to the age of 100--and remains in exceptional health--on a diet of white bread and cake. Seriously. Some Jello, sometimes. I wouldn't have thought a human body could survive a week on what she eats, but apparently hers can and does.
My father and I are both vaguely indignant about this. We both somehow feel it's wrong to eat nothing but white bread and cake, and it would be better for her to eat something fresh every now and again, but we run up against an argument that's impossible to rebut: There she is, alive and well and 100 years old. You're going to improve on that?
She's a living rebuttal to everything we're told about nutrition. If an Omega-3 fatty acid ever crossed her lips, it was probably before the outbreak of the First World War. She never gets any kind of antioxidant. Protein? Forget it. She eats pretty much exactly the diet every kid wants to live on and every mother forbids.
I don't know what to make of it. Obviously she's a statistical outlier, but maybe she's also evidence that we just don't know as much about nutrition as we think.
And for those of you wondering--she's also evidence that a positive attitude is not essential to longevity. Maybe it helps, but you can definitely make it to that age without one, I promise you.
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May '10
Re: What to Eat if You Want to Live to Be 100
My grandma is 92, and has also made it that far without a balanced diet or a cheery attitude (since her husband died and her friends drop like flies around her). She used to cook nice country meals every day, but now it's all we can do to get something in her stomach besides candy and coffee (which she drinks all day every day).
I once read an interview with a man who lived past 100. He said he ate the exact same meal every day, and part of it was red meat. The other part was potatoes, if I remember right.
Researchers are continually amazed by the adaptability of the human body. It's possible that forcing a body to adapt too much or too often can have adverse consequences. If so, a relatively uniform diet might be beneficial.
My grandma's brother smoked from about age 12 to age 80 and never had even a smoker's cough. So much about anatomy and life is not universal.
Anecdotal evidence, by the way, is supremely useful. Anecdotes are generally accompanied by context (stated or not) to a far greater degree than statistics. Context is everything.
Aug '10
Re: What to Eat if You Want to Live to Be 100
But how many more years of life could have been saved or created had she eaten her veggies?
Jul '10
Re: What to Eat if You Want to Live to Be 100
but... surely she jogs every day???? and does her pushups???
Re: What to Eat if You Want to Live to Be 100
Nope. She used to smoke, too.
Jun '10
Re: What to Eat if You Want to Live to Be 100
Love this post Claire, especially about a positive attitude not being essential. My mother and grandfather are testimony to that fact. However, retaining exceptional health throughout a long life is not necessarily a key to longevity in my family. My family tends to endure every possible ailment available or read about in the newspaper except something fatal for decades, so you never know how it's gonna go.
And to borrow a phrase in support of your grandmother, "Let her eat cake!"
Jun '10
Re: What to Eat if You Want to Live to Be 100
My mom is two and a half years short of 100, and she likes beef, pork, potatoes, lots of pie, lots of cookies, and until recently, lots of black coffee.
May '10
Re: What to Eat if You Want to Live to Be 100
Same here. Mom is 93, lives in the same house that she and Dad built 54 years ago, loves meat and potatoes, and even scared a lymphoma into submission- untreated- through force of will.
Aug '10
Re: What to Eat if You Want to Live to Be 100
Nutrition was the cutting edge of chemistry in the 1930's; then chemistry found better things to do, and now it is what I would call "restless toxicology." I used to belong to the American Chemical Society, which means I paid dues, which means I got C&E News in the mail every week, and an article on toxicology in that magazine really propelled me out of the field, for it is truly a racket. Nobody knows how to extrapolate the results of those feed-a-rat-200-cups-of-coffee-a-day studies down to more reasonable dimensions, and toxicologists are frankly worried that they can't: that things "poisonous" at high levels are just plain harmless at low levels.
Oh, Claire may like this. Teaching nutrition at a college, I eked out the course with foodways - observations about how people eat, and what they don't eat, and on one of my exams I threw in a question about iftar, which word I had been surprised to hear in Turkey during Ramadan because, well, all the restaurants had remained open. The students were unamused by this distraction. Just tell us what to eat!
May '10
Re: What to Eat if You Want to Live to Be 100
Anybody who lives to be 100 is a statistical outlier. Odds are the flour in the bread and cake are "fortified" (vitamins added). The cake would have milk, egg, and shortening. So your grandma is getting all necessary macronutrients (carbs, protein, and fat), and micronutrients (vitamins, calcium, etc.). You didn't specify what kind of cake, so it's not clear if the most vital nutrient of all (chocolate) is present in the diet, but otherwise seems sound to me.
Life is a collection of habits, if she made it to 100, better not to tinker with success.
Now excuse me while I go have a piece of cake.
Edited on Sep 11, 2010 at 6:41pmMay '10
Re: What to Eat if You Want to Live to Be 100
Pork ribs + deviled eggs + pie x Bama football = I added 2 years to my life tonight.
May '10
Re: What to Eat if You Want to Live to Be 100
Aren't the comments here just additional evidence that genetics play a huge role in our health. I have great uncles that are in their 90s and they are what we would all consider overweight. Their diet consists mostly of beef, pork, fried foods and I doubt they have eaten a fresh vegetable in over a decade. Sure, they are not as spry as they used to be but I'd say their quality of life, except for the normal toll of aging, is pretty good.
Yet, I have friends who grew up on a farm and ate mostly fresh food they grew themselves, yet their parents passed in their 60s.
I'm not saying that diet be damned and that you can't squeeze out more years if you have a "proper" diet and exercise. However, my own unscientific study seems to show that longevity is in our genes.
Besides, who wants to live to 100 if you are not really living!
Jun '10
Re: What to Eat if You Want to Live to Be 100
Mike's got the answer. It's baked in your genes. It's also written in the "Book of Life". I have to mention that, as Yom Kippur is just around the corner. So the 90 year old with a terrible diet that drinks and smokes is perfectly healthy until a bus jumps a curb and kills him. That's life.
May '10
Re: What to Eat if You Want to Live to Be 100
Mike Riscili:
Besides, who wants to live to 100 if you are not really living! · Sep 12 at 4:38am
Health nut: "Smoking takes 10 years off your life."
Denis Leary: "Yeah, but it's the ones at the end!"
I'm only half-serious in citing that, though. My 92-year-old grandma, unlike my grandpa who died about 10 years before, has gotten to see her great grandchildren. Every year she holds on, there's another one.
And it's when you're really old that people take the greatest interest in what experiences and what wisdom you have to share.
Jul '10
Re: What to Eat if You Want to Live to Be 100
I have 3 grandparents in their 90s. The one who died, my Grandpa, died of lung cancer from his 3 pack a day (Winstons) habit. My Grandma had two heart attacks; she cooks French, which is to say there's butter in everything; she's a teatotaler. My Nana used to smoke, has diabetes, and is as high strung as a violin. My Papa has had prostate cancer, smoked cigars like a chimney, and drinks Crown Royal whenever he can and drinks at least 2 glasses of wine daily. He's 94, and the oldest...
May '10
Re: What to Eat if You Want to Live to Be 100
Michael Tee: I have 3 grandparents in their 90s. The one who died, my Grandpa, died of lung cancer from his 3 pack a day (Winstons) habit. My Grandma had two heart attacks; she cooks French, which is to say there's butter in everything; she's a teatotaler. My Nana used to smoke, has diabetes, and is as high strung as a violin. My Papa has had prostate cancer, smoked cigars like a chimney, and drinks Crown Royal whenever he can and drinks at least 2 glasses of wine daily. He's 94, and the oldest... · Sep 12 at 5:12pm
Well, tea is well-known for prophylactic disease prevention qualities (we have funded studies going on here examing that right now), so if she is indeed a teatotaler, she is in good shape.
May '10
Re: What to Eat if You Want to Live to Be 100
I'm of the mind that any disease or condition that occurs after age 60 has less to do with how you lived your life than it is simply getting old. The human body starts to break down before age 30, and most people don't die in their sleep.
Almost every old person I know takes pills for something.