What to know about fasting, aging, the ‘longevity diet‘ and

[TexasRanger]

news.usc.edu/135551/fasting-aging-dieting-and-when-you-should-eat-valter-longo/?fbclid=IwAR1BC5bRQA-H20QBUic0fmyxmBP_mz5iIwDZgKUwduaXMcLPtBuWDkFd5_E

What changes would you like to see in people’s everyday diets?


My main recommendations are to follow what we see in most long-lived populations around the world but which also matches the science, which is a diet that is mostly plant-based, low in protein and rich in unsaturated fats and complex carbohydrates. It is primarily an issue of food type and quantity. It is also a matter of oversimplification, in which our society started demonizing entire nutrient groups. The truth is fats are good and bad. Carbs are good and bad. Proteins are good and bad. Fats like olive oil, nuts, salmon are actually associated with positive effects. It is saturated fats and trans fats that are associated with a lot of problems. You hear a lot about low-carb or no-carb diets, but the right carbohydrates, including legumes, vegetables and whole grains, are very good for you. In fact, all the populations who have record longevity have a high carbohydrate diet. All of them. No exceptions. It may seem easier to label foods as good or bad, but in the long run this leads to problems.

[Alan OldStudent]

Nov 12, 2018 16:29:15 GMT TexasRanger said:

news.usc.edu/135551/fasting-aging-dieting-and-when-you-should-eat-valter-longo/?fbclid=IwAR1BC5bRQA-H20QBUic0fmyxmBP_mz5iIwDZgKUwduaXMcLPtBuWDkFd5_E

What changes would you like to see in people’s everyday diets?


My main recommendations are to follow what we see in most long-lived populations around the world but which also matches the science, which is a diet that is mostly plant-based, low in protein and rich in unsaturated fats and complex carbohydrates. It is primarily an issue of food type and quantity. It is also a matter of oversimplification, in which our society started demonizing entire nutrient groups. The truth is fats are good and bad. Carbs are good and bad. Proteins are good and bad. Fats like olive oil, nuts, salmon are actually associated with positive effects. It is saturated fats and trans fats that are associated with a lot of problems. You hear a lot about low-carb or no-carb diets, but the right carbohydrates, including legumes, vegetables and whole grains, are very good for you. In fact, all the populations who have record longevity have a high carbohydrate diet. All of them. No exceptions. It may seem easier to label foods as good or bad, but in the long run this leads to problems.

TR,
The article describes roughly my way of eating, except that I eat about 0.75 to .80 g of protein per kilograms of my body weight. Most of the carbs I eat comes from vegetables, but some of it comes from grain-based starches. I get a lot of my protein from cottage cheese, soy milk, cow's milk, tofu, chicken, and I eat a bit of pork because I live in the Vietnamese section of town.

The reason for the protein level is that I do resistance training while I'm trying to lose weight. Being in my late 70s, my testosterone is a lot lower than it was back in the day. I'm trying to minimize the kind of muscle loss that typically comes from a reduced calorie diet. My muscle and strength gains have been quite slow but steady for the year I've been going to the gym. My weight loss comes to about 1 lb every 3 or 4 weeks steadily. Over the past year, I've lost close to 40 lb.

This rate of improvement would have seemed unacceptably slow to me when I was young, but at my age, this feels quite good to me.

My regimen is working out in the gym 3 times a week doing basic compound lifts, wind sprints on my off-gym days, air squats, pushups, and modified pull ups at home on off days (not to exhaustion). I also try to get in my 10,000 steps a day.

The young folks at the gym have been very kind to me and supportive and often offer me constructive criticism when they see me doing things like butt winking, letting my knees go too far ahead of my toes when deadlifting or squatting, or making other mistakes.

I feel positive, vigorous, and strong for an old guy and no major injuries. My resting pulse is about 48, and I am only slightly overweight. The gods have been kind to me, although I've outlived a lot of my family, including two wives.

[CaptainKronos]

The fact that "all the populations who have record longevity have a high carbohydrate diet" proves nothing. All those with shortest lifespans also have high carb diets. Also, I would say there is no "low carb" population large enough to even study, as humanity turned to an agrarian diet about 10,000 years ago. Also, if people in those high carb cultures are living to 80 on average, there is no reason to suppose people can't live much longer than that on low carb diets, it simply hasn't been studied because those populations don't really exist in a similar population. You can't all of a sudden start studying people who adopted low carb at age 40 and think that is a valid population to study. Personally I have nothing against fruits and veggies but grains are not a human food, so I try to limit them, admittedly it isn't easy because we are raised on them and become psychologically addicted to them. They are the root of untold health issues in humans because they are poisonous to us in their natural state, we have to process them to even digest them, and they are nutrient lacking compared to caloric content.

[TexasRanger]

Nov 13, 2018 12:32:23 GMT CaptainKronos said:

The fact that "all the populations who have record longevity have a high carbohydrate diet" proves nothing. All those with shortest lifespans also have high carb diets. Also, I would say there is no "low carb" population large enough to even study, as humanity turned to an agrarian diet about 10,000 years ago. Also, if people in those high carb cultures are living to 80 on average, there is no reason to suppose people can't live much longer than that on low carb diets, it simply hasn't been studied because those populations don't really exist in a similar population. You can't all of a sudden start studying people who adopted low carb at age 40 and think that is a valid population to study. Personally I have nothing against fruits and veggies but grains are not a human food, so I try to limit them, admittedly it isn't easy because we are raised on them and become psychologically addicted to them. They are the root of untold health issues in humans because they are poisonous to us in their natural state, we have to process them to even digest them, and they are nutrient lacking compared to caloric content.

"All those with shortest lifespans also have high carb diets"

I would suggest this isn't true: historically, societies such as the Inuit have much shorter lifespans than the Okinawans or Sardinians, based on published studies.  

Also, humans have consumed grains in various quantities going back further than 10,000 years.  The low carb advocates somehow made that number the line in the sand and it is not accurate.

[Alan OldStudent]

Nov 13, 2018 13:56:03 GMT TexasRanger said:

Nov 13, 2018 12:32:23 GMT CaptainKronos said:

The fact that "all the populations who have record longevity have a high carbohydrate diet" proves nothing. All those with shortest lifespans also have high carb diets. Also, I would say there is no "low carb" population large enough to even study, as humanity turned to an agrarian diet about 10,000 years ago. Also, if people in those high carb cultures are living to 80 on average, there is no reason to suppose people can't live much longer than that on low carb diets, it simply hasn't been studied because those populations don't really exist in a similar population. You can't all of a sudden start studying people who adopted low carb at age 40 and think that is a valid population to study. Personally I have nothing against fruits and veggies but grains are not a human food, so I try to limit them, admittedly it isn't easy because we are raised on them and become psychologically addicted to them. They are the root of untold health issues in humans because they are poisonous to us in their natural state, we have to process them to even digest them, and they are nutrient lacking compared to caloric content.

"All those with shortest lifespans also have high carb diets"

I would suggest this isn't true: historically, societies such as the Inuit have much shorter lifespans than the Okinawans or Sardinians, based on published studies.  

Also, humans have consumed grains in various quantities going back further than 10,000 years.  The low carb advocates somehow made that number the line in the sand and it is not accurate.

Hogwash!

[denis]

www.sbs.com.au/food/article/were-indigenous-australians-the-worlds-first-bakers/jdi2poxir

“That puts Australian baking way beyond anything that’s ever happened anywhere else in the world,” says author Bruce Pascoe. He’s talking about 36,000-year-old grindstones discovered in New South Wales, used by Aboriginal Australians to turn seeds into flours for baking. That’s well ahead of other civilisations that started baking early on, like the Egyptians, who began making bread around 17,000 BC.

Pascoe, who has Bunurong and Tasmanian heritage, combed through early colonists’ records to write his latest book, Dark Emu, Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident?. Explorers’ detailed accounts of packed piles of hay, grain surpluses, and three-meter wells contrast with the widely held, skewed view of Aboriginal people as “mere wanderers across the soil” (as Pascoe mentions in the book), revealing instead a sophisticated approach to cultivating and storing food via agricultural methods alongside hunting and foraging practices. According to Pascoe, the diffusion of the simplistic hunter-gatherer image served to justify the dispossession of Aboriginal people

[denis]

A native grass once harvested by Indigenous people, but these days more often overlooked as a roadside weed, could form the solution to restoring land exhausted by farming, researchers say


"Earlier research has found Kangaroo Grass has about 40 per cent more protein than your traditional used in bread."
amp.abc.net.au/article/13132462

[trog]

Jan 13, 2024 9:39:32 GMT denis said:

A native grass once harvested by Indigenous people, but these days more often overlooked as a roadside weed, could form the solution to restoring land exhausted by farming, researchers say


"Earlier research has found Kangaroo Grass has about 40 per cent more protein than your traditional used in bread."
amp.abc.net.au/article/13132462

Overcoming consumer resistance is the key to using Kangaroo Grass in bread. It is the same as getting consumers to accept insects as a protein source. The answer I think, is not to print what is in the food on the side of the packaging.