Next up for review
is The Longevity Diet, by Valter Longo, PhD. The author is the
Director of the Longevity Institute at University of Southern California. I
recently heard him give a talk at the Harvard School of Public Health and was
so impressed that I went out and bought his book.
Introduction
The main focus of
this book is about increasing longevity. It contains nutrition, exercise and
modified fasting tips based on the author’s research. The book is 317 pages. It
is very well written and I enjoyed reading it.
5 Things I Really Liked About The Longevity Diet
1) In an effort to
reduce conflict of interest, the author donates all of the proceeds of this
book to charity. I think this is terrific.
2) The author does
not promote fasting because of the side effects, including an increased risk of
heart disease. I could not agree more. The research literature has shown some
serious problems with fasting and our health.
3) I really like
the discussion on glycemic index and glycemic load. He mentions that glycemic
load is the more important of the two and I totally agree with this.
4) There is a
really good section on the health and longevity benefits of cardiovascular
exercise. This part of the book is really well done.
5) His longevity
diet is largely based on a nice Mediterranean diet. The research has
consistently shown that this is the best diet to reduce risk of chronic
disease.
5 Things I Didn’t Agree With In The Longevity Diet
1) A major issue I have, and one the author freely admits, is that most
of his research is in mice. There needs to be randomized trials in humans
before you can really have confidence in a lot of these recommendations.
2) There were a few references in the text that did not lead to any
searchable citations. For example, on page 67, the author cites his own study
showing an increased risk of mortality with higher protein intakes. When you
click on the reference, it just says “Levine et al and Longo, Low Protein
Intake”. This happens several times throughout the text. I was hoping to find a
full citation in a peer reviewed journal so I could read this study.
3) The author mentions that all protein increases risk of disease. I
fully agree that red meat, full fat dairy and processed meat promote a variety
of chronic diseases. However, seafood, chicken, turkey, and vegetable proteins
like beans, nuts, and legumes have not been shown to increase risk of disease
and don’t really need to be reduced in our diets. I have my clients shoot for
about 20% of their diet to come from these healthy protein sources.
4) I thought the section on resistant training was a little light. This
is a really important part of aging well and I think the recommendation could
have been a bit more comprehensive.
5) In the text, the author mentions some really sound dietary
recommendations very similar to the Mediterranean diet. At the end of the book
there are some meal plans and things go a bit sideways. The meals have an abundance of high glycemic
load carbs, including: bread, jam, pasta, dried fruit, smoothies, bagels, potatoes,
honey and pizza.
Is The Longevity Diet Worth Reading?
Absolutely! This book provides a lot of solid and research-based advice
to increase the odds that you will live longer and better.
I think we need to
see a bit more data on humans before the merits of modified fasting are
confirmed, but this is definitely an interesting line of research.
I like most of the
dietary recommendation in this book, I just think we should be a bit tighter on
the high glycemic load carbs and that healthy source of protein don’t have to
be quite as restricted.
