Which channel, chef, athlete, magazine, article, column, fitness instructor, grocer, programme, conference, yogi, mystic, yoga teacher actually knows what food is good for us?
What does ‘good’ mean? Apples are ‘good’ for us we are told. So is fish with Omega-3 twice a week, mangoes and all fruit. The list is endless, that if I started listing all the recommendations and all the foods that do damage, it would means a lifetime of research on Google. Does ‘good’ mean it will ensure such a diet will keep us within the recommended BMI range (that hasn’t changed for generations and has many flaws), that we will be less prone to heart attacks, skin disorders, cancer, or does it mean that we will live longer as a consequence of not suffering from the aforementioned diseases?
Every food in excess is not recommded. There is no science that being a vegan is any healthier than not. Is being a vegan just a fad? Do vegans live longer than other humans? (I am not interested in climate change and the impact of cows!…I work in the oil and gas industry. We burn fossil fuels and we will continue to do so). If Europe slows demand, Africa and Asia will not. However, I digress. I have a great fascination with life in the UK since the 1900s; food, way of life, music, clothes, transport, housing, energy demand, and education. The diet of British folk in the last 120 years is a topic worthy of anyones time. We have moved from food being simple, without much choice, to rationing to gluttony. The men and women during the Great Wars had ration books, and food was adequate but not in excess. I never saw a picture of malnutrition, obesity, and cases of cancer were very very low. Now, we have significant investment in science, books galore, everyone and their dog are ‘YouTubers’ giving health advice but most are school drop-outs, and chefs have become pseduo-doctors whilst studying the best way to boil an egg or cook a chicken. Everyone but everyone has an opinion. So, who is right? Who is actually advising us correctly? Who really wants to help us?
Most importantly…what exactly are they helping us do? By following their advice, will men have the shredded body of Mike Tyson in his heyday? And women have the enviable body of Elizabeth Hurley at 55? Is that all? Is this the ultimate aspiration of humans? The Japanese live a good long life and eat very clean. Are they the thought leaders? It’s not because of stress, because they have one of the highest suicide rates globally.
Can anyone link food with life expectancy? Or do we take the simple non-cerebral calculation that the less we eat, the thinner we become, or those who are slaves to McDonalds and microwave food blame their metabolism.
‘Oh, I’ve got a slow metabolism.’ 99.9% of people who make this statement have no idea what metabolism is. They didn’t get past turning on a Bunsen burner at school. But lo and behold, they are now scientists. What is a slow metabolism? 99.9% of people will say, ‘It’s when you can eat all you want and you don’t put on weight’. I always smile and try to end the conversation there, as obviously I’m talking to someone who has no clue what they are talking about. The expansive topic of ‘genetics’ might give them headache.
I was talking to an affluent Indian chef in London. Her name is Pakusha. She cooks all types of Asian food and very well. We discussed this topic of food and why people are obsessed with calories. Her reply was a question. Could I guarantee another 20 years lifespan is a woman was allowed to go up or down a few dress sizes? That does lifespan increase only for thin people? Would you rather get thinner or live longer? Are the two linked or not? …WOW! My thinking had reached another junction within a junction within a junction. It was getting complicated. Perhaps this is how the world makes money….but never giving a single answer. The more confusion there is, the less chance there is to find out at 99% of the recommendations available online are the equivalent of cat excrement wrapped in dog excrement. Worthless.
What proportion of cancer patients had a BMI below the recommended range, within the recommended BMI range, and above the recommended BMI range? Was there a link? No. There is no. There is absolutely no clear linkage. It’s about as clear as the cause and origins of Covid-19, yet for decades this has been researched and so much public has funded studies.
I spent many many hours studying the work and philosophy of Mr. Aubrey de Grey. Mr. de Grey is a biomedical gerontologist and is undertaking fascinating research. He is researcher on aging, and claims he has drawn a roadmap to defeat biological aging. He provocatively proposes that the first human beings who will live to 1,000 years old have already been born. Mr. de Grey challenges the most basic assumption underlying the human condition — that aging is inevitable. He argues instead that aging is a disease — one that can be cured if it’s approached as “an engineering problem.” His plan calls for identifying all the components that cause human tissue to age, and designing remedies for each of them — forestalling disease and eventually pushing back death. He calls the approach Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS).
I read his 1999 book ‘The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging’, in which Mr. de Grey wrote that obviating damage to mitochondrial DNA might by itself extend lifespan significantly, though he said it was more likely that cumulative damage to mitochondria is a significant cause of senescence, but not the single dominant cause. We do know that genetics and physiology determine their processing of macronutrients, especially carbohydrates and fat. Some people will put on weight if they eat a certain amount of something that would not cause other people to put on weight, and so on.
The only recommendation that one can give that has any general validity is that you have to pay attention to your body. You just have to do what your body is telling you to do and resist to go with the flavor of today when it comes to what you put into your body or do with it. That’s all we can really say. Everyone is different.
Let’s have a closer look at how the lifespan of humans has developed. In the 1700s, the 1800s, life expectancy was very much lower, it was in the 30s. And the reason was because so many children would die very young. In fact, even in the world’s wealthiest countries, the incidence of infant mortality was like one in three or more. In other words, more than one- third of babies would die before the age of one. And of course, with the help of science we fixed a lot of that by figuring out that hygiene is a good idea and we developed vaccines and antibiotics, very simple medicines. Now, of course, these issues are still the main driver of the increase in life expectancy today in the developing world and the reason why the average lifespan worldwide has now reached I think 72 or maybe even 73, which is really pretty good. There’s not a single country in the world with a life expectancy lower than 50 any more.
But let’s also reflect a moment what does this mean and what’s next from here? Well, in the industrialized world, that major push in life expectancy had mainly been accomplished by World War II already. But, once you have driven down the incidence of a particular cause of death to almost zero and thus increased a particular average age of death for that particular cause, you can’t do it again.
The only reason why life expectancy has continued to rise at all in the industrialized world since World War II is because of progress in other areas and so we have seen that the risk of death, or the mortality rate, has continued to decline. In other words, life expectancy after the age of let’s say 50 has continued to increase.
Of course, there are many causes for that and there’s still some debate as to which are the biggest ones. For example, it’s pretty clear that some of it come from things like the decline in smoking, but most people think that the biggest single is simply prosperity. When people become more prosperous, they are also better fed and have a better diet in general and especially really early in life and even prenatally. It turns out that lots and lots can go wrong in the very early part of life to the extent that some people can end up essentially being biologically older throughout their whole life because of certain deficiencies in their nutrition in early life and pre-birth. Conversely, if you can have better nutrition when you are in the womb, then you are going to live longer. Most people think that these are some of the main reasons why things have improved over the past 50 or 70 years.
Mr. de Grey points to seven of the most significant known causes of human aging, and what is known about how those causes can be addressed and combated: 1. Cell loss, tissue atrophy, 2. Nuclear (DNA) mutations (cancer), 3. Mitochondrial DNA mutations, 4. eath-resistant cells (cells not dying when they are supposed to), 5. Tissue stiffening (glycation: stiffens tissues leading to stroke, heart disease, etc.), 6. Extracellular aggregates (or “junk”, e.g. beta amyloids), 7. Intracellular aggregates (or “junk”, e.g. lipofuscin).
De Grey’s main line of research is into mutations in mitochondrial DNA that cause increased cell stress via production of free-radicals. In other words: something that will need to be addressed in a lab rather than in your kitchen or following “eat healthy and exercise” sort of advice.
We eat to stay healthy, look fit, slim, and live longer. We want to enjoy time with our families, children, grandchildren. We want to travel the world. So much to so, yet so little time, unless we can extend that timeline. The environment, stress, our work, food, exercise all contribute to clean living. Clean living is important and easy to do, but complicated by marketing and inexperienced crooks advising on topics they don’t understand. No different to whether organic food vs ordinary food makes any difference to our lives.
Life is as complicated as we want to make it. We live a clean life, physically and mentally fit, no medical history…have a chance to make steps towards 1000 years old, and then….. a drunk runs you over in a car.
How ironic that Italians have such a healthy diet and also produce the fastest cars!
