Jiroemon Kimura, recognized by Guinness World Records as the oldest man in recorded history, died in June of natural causes at the age of 116. He was succeeded as the world’s oldest living person by yet another Japanese Okinawan.
What is the common thread that runs amongst these centernarian Okinawans, a Japanese group which often includes the world’s oldest person who usually dies of natural causes? If you believe in math and science, the odds are extremely good that their plant-based, whole foods diet is crucial to their health and longevity, just as it was with the 70,000 Seventh Day Adventists recently researched in this study. http://www.adventist.org/mission_and_service/features/study-of-adventi.html Quite contrary to what is recommended by Dr. Atkins, who had a heart attack and lived a whopping 44 years less than Jiroemon, or the so-called “Paleo Diet”, Jiroemom ate rice, sweet potato, and beans including soybeans at nearly every meal. Every day. As with elder Okinawans, fish was the primary source of animal protein. But meat like fish was reserved for special occasions like Jiroemon’s last birthday. http://www.faboverfifty.com/intheknow/our-health/diet-secrets-centenarians
Now imagine living just 116 years ago. And every year in human history before that. You had no refrigerator, no freezer, no stove, no oven, no running water, no electricity, no grocery store. Everything cooked was cooked over a fire. Imagine what life was like before public education. The entire world was third world, the middle class did not exist, and meat was at least as “expensive” as it is now, meaning you had to sacrifice months of meals to an animal before you got a single meal of it. Humans everywhere lived every day to survive, not to thrive. If refrigerators and freezers did not exist to refrigerate meat or dairy, and yesterday’s poverty makes today’s poverty look wealthy, how would you have eaten? Perhaps a lot like the elder Okinawans and billions of others in third world countries today where the incidence of heart disease, alzheimer’s, diabetes, osteoporosis, and cancer are still rare. Perhaps like the billions of people whose dietary staples are still affordable plant-based, whole foods like rice and beans or rice and lentils.
Quick fixes, short-term symptomatic improvements, hype, and a wide money trail help many forget not just common sense, but overwhelming evidence. Billions of people in today’s world, and billions of people across human history, make for a very, very large research trial. The same approach that works so effectively for Okinawans and 70,000 Seventh Day Adventists works for all humans across all blood types, “metabollic types”, and other gimmick phrases which represent opinion and marketing, not empirical research. Don’t be fooled.