Book Review: The Longevity Diet

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.