

The Longevity Experiment - limist
http://adventure.nationalgeographic.com/print/2009/06/live-longer-dan-buettner-text
From National Geographic, Dan Buettner's search for the fountain of youth among the longest-lifespan cultures of the world.
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zngtk4
>It’s very clear that the more meat you eat, the earlier you die. Cut out as
much meat as you can.

Absolute nonsense. The only thing that has a clear relationship with extending
lifespan is calorie restriction. The rest is very very unclear.

This guy finds a population, finds one thing they do that supports his
preconceived notions of what makes you live longer, and then says that this
population's behavior in this respect proves that this action makes you live
longer.

So he finds a vegetarian culture that lives long and says OK vegetarianism
makes you live longer. He finds a culture that drinks a lot of alcohol and
says OK, alcohol doesn't limit longevity.

He finds a culture that eats a balanced diet, a culture that exercises a lot,
etc. etc.

None if this is really any type of proof, and if you examine many different
cultures, you will find his evidence is contradicted by other cultures (meat
eating cultures that live longer and have fewer health problems than nearby
vegetarian cultures, for instance).

Our knowledge of what helps humans to live the longest possible life is,
sadly, very limited still.

~~~
jackchristopher
And what do we mean by meat? I'm sure toxin filled fish effects you
differently from fresh. Or grass-fed (natural diet) chicken is different
nutritionally than industrial chicken.

zngtk4 is basically saying that nutrition science is sampling at too low at
resolution to make definitive claims, I buy that.

How many times can you flip-flop on eggs until we stop listening? Obviously
they're something else going on. The argument that they're generally "bad" is
too low rez. Not to mention how we were told to eat margarine over butter for
50+ years, and it turned out to be one of the worse things to consume.

~~~
jodrellblank
And what do we mean by vegetarian? There's got to be a massive difference
between living on bread, potato, cake and nut-roast and living on salad, fruit
and steamed greens. "Not eating meat" really doesn't say much about what you
_do_ eat.

Raw foodists claim there's a lot of denaturing and damage done to proteins,
enzymes and more when food is cooked. There are differences in composition
between food that is cooked until done and food that is cooked until blackened
(e.g. on a barbecue). Some claim there is measurable damage done when food is
blended compared to chopped or juiced 'gently'. There is lots of skepticism
about microwave cooking versus traditional ovens. As well as eggs, popular
advice zig-zags on soy and types of fats. So...

>> zngtk4 is basically saying that nutrition science is sampling at too low at
resolution to make definitive claims, I buy that.

I buy it too.

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emontero1
_OK, educate: I don’t want to die at 50. What do I do?

The first step is to think about who you hang out with. There’s no silver
bullet for longevity. I’m not gonna tell you to take a pill. If your three
best friends are obese, there’s a good chance you will be. Surrounding
yourself with people who don’t smoke or drink too much and who have a
spiritual component in their lives has a profound impact over time. Cut out
the toxic people in your life and spend time and effort augmenting your social
circle with people who have the right values and a healthy lifestyle._

I don't know why, but this snippet brought Robert Greene's The 48 Rules of
Power to mind: "Infection: Avoid the Unhappy and Unlucky" (Rule 10). Of
course, Greene's approach can be interpreted as a tad Machiavellian. But the
message is still the same: watch who you're hanging out with. I've noticed
that many of one's peculiar behavioral habits can be directly attributed to
friends and acquaintances. It's interesting to see longevity talked about in
the context of the people you spend time with.

~~~
JacobAldridge
My father boiled this down into an aphorism I still use and share.

"You are who you hang with."

I know sometimes when I'm feeling crap I look at which groups of friends I've
been spending time with lately. Always scary stuff.

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blhack
Could you please warn if you're going to link to a page that will launch a
print dialog?

I appreciate not having to click through pages, etc. a little warning would
just be nice.

~~~
rms
It's mostly accepted here that a print dialog pop up is better than having to
click through an article divided into five pages.

~~~
GavinB
Autopager beats either option. <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/4925>

What's really needed is an autopager/readability mashup.

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mgenzel
Until there's a controlled, replicable method, all these studies, approaches,
genius ideas are just blah-blah-blah exercises in pretty correlations.

~~~
jshen
By your reasoning, all this stuff about climate change is just blah blah blah.
Correlations seen numerous times in independent efforts are meaningful.

I'm also not sure what you mean by "controlled". For example, in the china
study the group that ate more meat was compared to a similar group in the same
country with the same lifestyle. Isn't this the definition of a control group?

~~~
kingkongrevenge
> I'm also not sure what you mean by "controlled".

Obviously not. You just offered the definition of uncontrolled.

> climate change is just blah

Well he makes a pretty good point that data dredging for correlations is bad
science. But the real reason climate change is "blah" is that the world isn't
actually warming. Clearly shown for over ten years now by satellite and ground
station data. There was only warming after a long cooling trend that lasted
into the 70s.

[http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/06/how-the-us-
temperat...](http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/06/how-the-us-temperature-
record-is-adjusted/)

~~~
jshen
please explain what you mean by "controlled" then.

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Shakescode
Re: all the deficiencies of this article: It's journalism(-ish). Not even
science journalism. The NG heading says it all: "Adventure Travel - National
Geographic Adventure Magazine" ...not even the _main_ NG site, but the
"adventure" subdomain.

More suitable for pondering than analyzing, IMHO.

------
grandalf
I highly recommend The China Study for a more detailed, epidemiological study
of nutrition.

~~~
zngtk4
On the other hand, as I explain above, epidemiological studies are essentially
useless for anything other than formulating hypotheses (see the debacle with
hormone replacement therapy).

It baffles me that anyone would entirely change their diet and lifestyle based
on an epidemiological study.

~~~
grandalf
The evidence is not just from the epidemiological study, there have been lots
of follow-up studies to examine the processes in detail.

I would argue that a broad, epidemiological study is the _most persuasive_
sort of evidence to use when considering whether to make drastic changes.
Otherwise you're dealing with information like "omega 3s prevent x, y, and z"
so you end up taking an Omega 3 supplement along with the dozen other
supplements while eating Wendy's for lunch every day.

Thinking that health can be understood on the basis of "taking supplement x is
good" is the root of the current supplement gold rush (people sell tons of
snake oil substances that contain "omega 3's" etc.) and a highly irrational
way to behave.

~~~
zngtk4
>follow-up studies to examine the processes in detail.

Examining the processes isn't sufficient to provide proof unless it's a
completely thorough examination. Biological science isn't at that point yet,
and so what this usually means is that group A performs an observational
study, group B finds a process that would explain group A's results, assuming
group A's results are true. That's different from showing that group A's
results were true.

Human, and animal, physiology is very complicated, and it's just plain wrong
to assert that we know that eating meat decreases longevity. We don't. There
is some evidence to believe it, and some evidence to not believe it at this
point (both epidemiological studies and at the molecular understanding of the
processes involved).

Epidemiological may be persuasive, but it's misleading because you take a
single variable out of hundreds that may not even be known. So you may get
Texans who become vegetarians based on longevity studies in some region of
China, but then live an even shorter life because their lifestyles and the
particular vegetarian foods that they eat aren't as conducive to longevity.
This history of epidemiological studies are full of cases like this.

~~~
grandalf
I don't dispute your logical points, but I think there is still a rather
strong case for eating a plant-based diet.

Clearly, humans can eat meat (during most of human evolution calories were
scarce and eating meat conferred a selection advantage)...

But why would you reason that all foods are equally beneficial and harmful? To
me, broad epidemiological studies can offer clues on classes of foods and some
of the costs/benefits that they confer.

~~~
zngtk4
I'm not reasoning that all foods are equally beneficial and harmful, and I
accept that it may very well be that a plant-based diet is superior to a meat-
based diet. I reject the idea, however, that we know enough to say that this
is true, and I absolutely reject the idea of significantly changing behavior
based solely on epidemiological studies -- the epidemiological studies should
be the starting point for much further study. To date, most large-scale
controlled studies on diet have unfortunately been shelved. It should entirely
be possible to separate multiple groups on multiple different diets and see
what happens over a period of, say, ten years -- one diet as vegetarian, one
diet as meat/fruit/nut but no grains, a fish+vegetarian diet, while holding
other variables constant (such as calories). This is what we need to do to
know, and this is what has consistently been proposed, but not done.

~~~
grandalf
You are correct.

However the study that you call for has been done in laboratory animals -- TCC
found that (controlling for calories, etc.) the animal proteins he studied led
to the growth of cancer cells, while plant based foods did not cause cancer to
develop, even in an environment of radiation, etc., that would typically be
thought to be the _cause_ of the cancer.

I fully agree that the study you mention would be hugely beneficial, but by
your logic one ought to smoke cigarettes if one chooses, or at least ought to
have done so in the 1980s before more conclusive evidence began to emerge...
even though most doctors/scientists had held a strong belief that smoking was
a bad idea for decades.

If one were to base all of his health decisions on studies that were
conclusively done in humans (without regard for any animal studies, etc.) one
would be limited to a 1950s understanding. Humans are not mice, and the
studies don't all correlate perfectly, but many do. And they contain valuable
(though not necessarily conclusive) information.

------
jacquesm
correlation != causation.

~~~
fatdog789
Isn't this article about correlation? Isn't the point of the article that
something about eating less meat (whether it's lifestyle, actual dietary
effects, or something innocuous) correlates, whether or not there is a causal
relationship*, to significantly increased longevity?

~~~
jacquesm
If there is no direct causal link then all correlation does is suggest such a
link. You have to _FIND_ the link and prove its real in order to make this
about something.

X is observed in people doing Y is not a scientific breakthrough, it is an
observation. If not all people that do Y have X there is no story, just more
work to get to the bottom of what is going on.

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kingkongrevenge
> the more meat you eat, the earlier you die

Then why have lifespans gone up and heart disease declined all around the
world in lockstep with animal protein consumption? Why do the two longest
lived groups in the US (Mormons and upper upper Midwest whites) have high meat
consumption?

~~~
jshen
heart disease has increased with meat consumption.

~~~
zngtk4
Heart disease has also increased with sugar consumption. Older cultures that
ate primarily meat, but not a western diet also showed almost no heart
disease.

~~~
Devilboy
Older cultures also didn't live to their 70s like we do now so I'm not
convinced that this is a good counter-example.

~~~
zngtk4
I agree, this is one of the biggest flaws with this line of reasoning.
However, it does say something (although it's unclear what it means for us)
that some of those cultures had less incidence of the diseases commonly
associated with old age compared with nearby similar cultures that ate less or
no meat.

~~~
jshen
can you produce a controlled study backing up your assertion ;)

