Today I want to start a new series of videos where I will challenge lots of the current nutrition and lifestyle trends with common sense backed up by the latest research.  We will begin with food and several popular diets as it relates to longevity.

Look we all want to live longer and healthier lives. Many people also want to lose weight and look better. Unfortunately, none of the popular diets has ever been proven to do just that. Keto diet, Carnivore diet, Paleo diet, whatever diet—all of them have a major problem: they are all made up by someone who took usually a decent concept applicable to a specific condition, twisted it, and turned it into a one-size-fits-all diet prescription that people should follow to lose weight, be healthy and live longer.

There is one big issue with this concept. And that is that none of these diet plans have ever been proven as safe and beneficial in the long term. When I say long-term, I don’t mean 5-10 years, but at least 100 years.

I mean, let me ask you, how big of a problem has obesity been 100-200 years ago? By my last check, we have not seen it becoming a major problem until the past 50-60 years ago. So, does it mean that everybody was following the Keto diet or any of the other insane diets at that time, and that’s why they were not obese? I mean, come on, we all know what the problem is—we eat too much, big part of that being junk food, and we don’t move. So do you really think that we can fix this by eliminating carbs and snacking on steak because carbohydrates are the evil?

I am exaggerating, but I hope you get the point. So let me ask you another question. Which society anywhere on the planet in the recent history of humankind was able to eat mostly meat and animal products and live to be 100+ years old? I will help you—none—that simple. Why? Because from the dawn of humankind, meat and animal products have been so scarce that it was impossible for the majority of the population to live only on that.

If you go anywhere in Southeast Asia in areas where people still struggle to make ends meet, you will see that for a family to put a chicken, pork, or any other form of animal product on their table, it is literally a holiday. These families survive mostly on plant-based food that they can either grow in their backyard or pick up in the wild. But I guess the folks who promote these diets think that people in the Western developed countries have bodies that are somehow different and were made for these heavy animal protein-loaded diets.

I have traveled extensively across many Southeast Asian countries and observed their way of life. My wife is Filipina and we discussed in length how she and most of her friends were growing up and what food was available to them, their parents and grandparents.  I have also seen the difference between the affluent areas and those that were struggling. You know what was one of the most obvious differences? The number of overweight people in the areas that had heavy income from tourism compared to the areas where people struggled to get by.

And guess what? Those areas that continue to struggle to get enough food on their tables have a lot greater longevity with more individuals living longer and healthier lives. Sadly, in most cases, this is not intentional, but unfortunately the result of their socioeconomic status. But it proves the point.

The best part about everything that we have said so far is that this is not only my observation, but it is a scientific fact that has been well documented. There still are areas of the world where people routinely live to be 90 – 100+ years old, enjoying a healthy, productive life. They call these areas Blue Zones because the researcher who tried to map these areas had no other pen than a blue marker to mark them on the map. These areas include Okinawa in Japan, Sardinia in Italy, Loma Linda in California, Nicoa Peninsula in Costa Rica and Ikara in Grece.

Lots of research has been done to study these places to find out what they have in common and how the lifestyle of people living in these areas affect their longevity. The one thing that the researchers noticed was that these individuals eat healthy, simple, mostly plant-based diets with some animal products. They do not follow any Keto diet, carnivore diet, zone diet, or whatever diet you want to name. They eat simple whole food that is as close to its natural state as possible. Obviously, diet is never the only factor. Several other components that create a healthy lifestyle have to come along with diet to affect our longevity. But the point is that this form of eating is not based on any pre-set rules of what one is or is not allowed to eat.

None of the new fancy diets out there have any long-term track record of proving that they are going to make anybody live longer. In fact, the opposite is true, and there is plenty of evidence to show that diets high in animal protein, but actually high in any protein, are detrimental to our health and even can promote the development of certain types of cancers.

I hear some saying that people lose weight following the Keto diet or that they feel great…you know what I have to say to this? Well, people lose weight by drinking only water and eating saltines crackers too—but it would be hard-pressed to find anyone who would think that it is healthy to do it long term. The same goes for the Keto, carnivore, and all the other extreme diets. They sure can make you look great and make you feel better in the short term, because you most likely also cut out all the other garbage from your diet.  Butt guess what—it is not a natural way to eat and our bodies have not been programmed to function on that kind of diet. Humans never had access to this kind of food as the only source of nutrients.

I mean, it’s kind of common sense. The biggest issue I have with most of these unnatural diet plans is that they can actually be harmful and there is quite a bit of evidence to support that. I will not be getting into great details about it today, because I will be posting more information discussing just that, but I want to say that following any form of extreme diet, I don’t care what kind of diet it is, is simply not a natural way of living. Eating should be enjoyable; it should not be a chore.

So here is the longevity punch line. Are you going to follow a diet plan proposed by someone just because they throw at you a bunch of studies showing that it has this or that benefit? Or are you going to mimic as closely as possible the eating habits and general lifestyle of individuals from different parts of the world who actually have been living healthy and active lives to be 90 or even 100 years old? To me, it’s a no-brainer.

But wait, what about all the studies that proponents of these crazy diets—I am sorry, but I can’t help but to call them crazy diets—keep throwing around, saying how these diets lower blood sugar, cholesterol, and whatnot. I have a few things to say about that as well. For one, we know this much—show fingers—about what the most important biomarkers for a healthy body function are. We know something, but there are so many chemical processes happening in our bodies every split second, that we have no way to measure the majority of them. Let alone quantify them and decide what they mean and how to affect them in a positive way.

For example, we can measure blood sugar, and we know that if somebody has high blood sugar in the long term, it is not good and that there are consequences to that. We do know things like that, but just as an example, we had no idea about 50 years ago that there is a strong correlation between having elevated levels of an inflammatory marker called C-reactive protein, and the risk for cardiovascular disease. We could not even properly measure and quantify it until very recently. So what I am saying is that there are so many other things in our bodies that we still cannot measure that play a huge role in our health and affect our longevity.

What I am trying to get across is that just because someone’s blood sugar is within a normal level today because they avoid carbs and lost weight on one of these crazy diets, doesn’t mean that they can’t develop diabetes due to, for example, an autoimmune disease or other causes a few months later, because we have no idea how to detect those causes by our current medical advances.

So you see, judging somebody’s health by looking at the results of some laboratory tests and making a conclusion that because the lab results look great, the diet has to be great for their health, is like looking at a house and saying, “Wow, this must be a great house because it has nice fresh paint.” Ignoring the fact that underneath the paint, the walls are cracked and molded because the house has been constructed from poor quality material and has a leaking roof that you obviously can’t see unless it’s raining. But it sure can feel great moving in and living in this kind of house for a while—until a strong wind and rain come in and the underlying issues surface.

Another problem that I have with looking at research studies is the whole concept of studies. Most people do not know this, but having analyzed and read hundreds of studies during my doctoral training at Columbia University, I have seen how research data can be twisted and misreported to arrive at exactly the conclusion that the scientists are looking for. Because they know that the majority of people will never bother to dissect how they collected and analyzed the data and will only look at the study summary.

So, I am not saying that studies are completely worthless, but I am saying that I will use research data only to support common sense and real-life application of the data; I will not use research data in and of itself to make my decision if something works or not.

For me to accept something and adopt it as a way of healthy lifestyle or eating, I want proof. Not on paper, but living proof. I want to see how many people have successfully applied these eating habits and lifestyle practices and benefited from them over a very long time frame. To my knowledge, at this point, no one can show me groups of people around the world who followed the Keto diet or carnivore diet or any other of the crazy diets their whole life and lived to be healthy and active 100-year-olds.

But as I said, there are several groups of people in different parts of the world who have been following independently similar eating habits and lifestyles, and they do live to be 100 years old and enjoy healthy and productive lives until the very end. That’s what I am interested in reproducing. That is what I believe is the most reasonable path to great longevity. I don’t want to follow the advice of someone who is telling me how to make a million dollars, I want to follow the advice of someone who has already made millions of dollars with the strategy they are preaching.

You do whatever you feel comfortable with, but make sure you apply common sense to your decision. So when it comes to selecting the most optimal meal plan—I say meal plan because diet is a bad word in my opinion—it primarily has to do with following common sense. Look at what works and has been proven to work and stop looking for a magic bullet. I promise you that it does not exist.

Food is a gift, and we should cherish it, not struggle with it. But it does take a few considerations. The main one in my experience is for people to give up processed fast food and snacks. That is the number one reason why most people do not succeed and what all the centenarians have in common. But we will talk about other things in my post.