There’s nothing quite like food to unite… or polarise! Just try sitting at the same table as your vegan colleague, your paleo best friend and your unrepenting “I don’t give a damn about what I eat, provided I like it”-uncle and you’re bound to find out.
Now you might think that in the cosy little longevity community, we would have at least figured out THE ultimate diet that will guarantee us both survival AND thriving beyond our 120th birthday.
Well, we hate to disappoint, but even in the health buff world, there is little consensus about if or when you should eat your carbs, how much protein is healthy, the exact nature of good and bad fats and if (intermittent) fasting really benefits everyone.
It may be a case of the science not being advanced enough to reach definitive conclusions. It may be a case of vested interests feeding personal preferences, or the other way round. But just as likely, it may be the belated recognition that our nutritional needs are so individual (or genetically and epigenetically pre-disposed) that there can be no “one-size-fits-all” – as discussed in a previous epiAge instalment on global diets.
OK then, if we can’t all agree on broad dietary composition, couldn’t we at least converge on some foods or beverages to give ourselves a longevity head start?
This is the aim of our new epiAge “Longevity F&B” series, in which we’ll be investigating some of the most consensual fare in the longevity realm.
So, let’s kick start our endeavour with… (almost) everyone’s favourite morning pick-me-up: coffee!
Read on – in our next instalment.
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Illustration
Still Life with Fruit (1675) by Jacob van Walscapelle / rawpixel / epiAge
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