What is the best diet for longevity?

Hacking your health in the name of longevity can often lead to an inflexible assortment of trends, positions, and advice, each one further removed from the other. Take a dip in cold water. Sit in a sauna. Walk 10,000 steps a day. Bryan Johnson, leader of the Don’t Die diet, swallows supplements like candy—but, of course, he doesn’t eat candy.

When it comes to diet, and specifically how what we eat affects our lifespan, the information available on the links between diet and longevity can be equally conflicting. Some will recommend that you eat lots of meat. Others argue that’s not quite the case. (“Meat is like radiation,” Walter Willett, a nutrition researcher at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, once said. “We don’t know what the safe level of radiation is.”)

Walter Longo, director of the University of Southern California Longevity Institute, even explains exactly what you need to do to live a long life. It’s on his website, where the first line says, “Eat mostly vegan foods.” Your protein intake? Low. When to eat? Stick to a fasting diet, limiting all meals to between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.

What are we supposed to do then, you ask, if the idea is to optimize diet for the sake of our health so that we can live long and healthy lives?

“There is no one-size-fits-all diet,” says Dr. Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard. “The good news is that there are different diets that can help prevent chronic disease and improve longevity.”

Keep your feet on the ground

If you want to live a long and disease-free life, the basic principle of any diet should be to eliminate ultra-processed foods. Packaged snacks, cookies, fast food burgers, soda: all of these foods are more harmful to your body, no matter how tasty a pack of chocolate chip cookies may be.

“Ultra-processed foods are everywhere and ubiquitous in our diets today, but they are very high in sugar, sodium and unhealthy fats,” Hu says.

Visit the Mediterranean

The Mediterranean diet is often touted as one of the best diets for preventing chronic disease and maintaining heart health. Limiting dairy consumption and increasing the amount of fish and foods rich in omega-3s are two principles of this diet.

The other key feature of the diet is paying attention to the types of fats and carbohydrates you consume rather than eliminating them completely. Consuming extra virgin olive oil is an important part of the Italian diet. “It’s not just beneficial for lowering your cholesterol,” Hu says. “It can prevent other chronic diseases, like dementia or Alzheimer’s.”

There’s no need to cut out red meat entirely. If you enjoy a steak every now and then, stick to a slice or flank, both of which are lean cuts that contain essential nutrients like zinc, heme iron, and B vitamins.

Go blue

Blue Zones around the world, such as Okinawa and Sardinia, are known for their exceptionally long-lived inhabitants. People in these regions, who tend to exercise regularly and have rich social lives, are known to live well into their 80s. Their diets are typically split 95-5. That is, only 5% of their meals contain animal protein, while 95% of their diet is plant-based. In Loma Linda, California, where more centenarians live than anywhere else in the world, vegetarian diets are all the rage, and alcohol is banned. As is caffeine.

The Adventist Health Study 2, which has followed 96,000 Americans and Canadians since 2002, shows that people who follow a vegetarian or mostly vegetarian diet have lower cholesterol and high blood pressure levels, as well as a lower prevalence of type 2 diabetes.

But as Hu says, that doesn’t mean you have to radically change your diet. What all Blue Zones have in common is that they follow one key principle.

“You don’t have to follow a strict diet,” he says. “Basically, you should eat minimally processed, whole foods: fruits and vegetables, whole grains, nuts, legumes and seeds.”

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