Another Walter Willett paper, "Optimal dietary patterns for healthy aging"

(Bob M) #1

Meat, bad; plants, good.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-025-03570-5

(Brian) #2

I found it interesting that the study didn’t want to go beyond 70. That’s pretty young. I would love to see what going into 80 and 90 would do to their numbers.

I say that because I used to be a member of a “religious organization” that was bent towards plant based veganism being the utmost in a healthy diet. While I never kept statistics, I still remember of people doing pretty well on that diet for a while (typically new-comers / recent converts) and then crashing, typically in their mid 70’s to early 80’s where their health would nosedive. Yeah, there were more people with Alzheimer’s in this group than in the general population. I heard the “health message” preached ad nauseam but yet the actual results did not show what the preaching suggested it would.

Sorry, but I don’t tend to be interested in taking health advice from people who look like walking heart attacks or death warmed over… who often claim lifespans should be 120 years and yet croak in their 70’s or 80’s. Yup, big disconnect there.

#3

I agree. I surely will be healthy enough (except tooth, eyes, they are my problem areas since early childhood. and I have backache sometimes but diet has nothing to do with that) until 70, it’s not a big deal with my genes (and diet changes and exercise… but Mom had the normal sugary HCHF diet all her life and was pretty healthy and strong, her mom too), I want to be healthy way after 100 too, I suppose I need way more than good genes for that!

The study is surprisingly detailed in the right way (I just glanced at it, I don’t think I could get valuable info from it so don’t want to spend too much time on it), I saw so much worse :smiley: But as I am pretty sure their conclusion isn’t right and even many food item groups aren’t informative enough (there are worse and way better options in a single one and different people easily have extremely different optimal diets), I still wouldn’t trust anything they say.
My SO and I need quite different diets to reach 120 in pretty good health, well it’s just an educated guess as some people are surprisingly healthy on not great diets according our knowledge. And I am pretty open-minded, I know some people needs lots of carbs and so on BUT there are some clear, more general vague guidelines we should heed… The human body can be pretty sturdy in some cases but abusing this, even just a little, for many decades… That probably shows in the end (and even before just less so?). So I find it important to do what is good for me, most of the time.

(Brian) #4

Yeah, for sure. I sometimes mourn the fact that I didn’t arrive at keto / low-carb eating until into the journey half a century. Lots of damage done by then. Some has gotten better, some never will. (Can’t grow new teeth, for example, no matter how great the diet now is. If they’re gone, they’re not growin’ back.)

It’s kinda amusing, when I first went keto, there were people in my old religion that were just sure I was gonna unalive myself with this diet. LOL!! When I happen to run into them, perhaps in the local Walmart, it’s funny how they’re often complaining about their health and looking so unhealthy. Granted, I’m no image of health like Dr. Baker, but I’ve lost a lot of weight and have been able to do a whole lot more as someone 60+ than I did when I was 40, morbidly obese, and trying so hard to be a good little vegan.

(Chuck) #5

I am 77 years young, I eat a moderately low carbs diet, I intermittent fasting 16 hours each day with hard rules of never eating later that 6pm or before 10am. I walk whenever possible 2 to 6 miles. I have never been hospitalized or had an illness worse than the flu. Never had a surgery and don’t take any prescription drugs. I don’t eat factory processed food. My wife and I make one own bread from stone ground wheat, my wife makes her own pasta. I make the sausage. We also cure our own bacon.
My favorite breakfast is my smoothies that I create. I love fruits, vegetables and nuts and I love farm fresh vegetables, fruit, dairy and meat. I stay mostly away from grocery stores.

(Bob M) #6

This illustrates one problem with these types of studies: is it the diet, or the religion? Often, people who are involved in religious organizations live longer, probably due to a sense of community.

My guess is that a religious order with veganism wouldn’t live as long as a religious order with a lot of meat, but there’s no good way to test this.

Another problem is that you get people who are trying to be healthy versus people who aren’t. I mean, given the anti-(red) meat bias, would you say you ate red meat? Or might you lower the amount you say you eat?

(KM) #7

Sigh. Here we go again. Plants good. Everything else lumped in together, bad. It’s like saying sleeping with a wool blanket on a bed of nails is unhealthy, ergo clearly you need to use a cotton blanket. :woman_facepalming:

(Brian) #8

It brings to mind another related factor. I remember while being a part of the organization that these “food frequency questionnaires” were passed out by the elders of the church and they “highly encouraged” people to fill them out and turn them back in. OF COURSE a person would want to “slant” the data towards being a good little (religious denomination), as in, “look how faithfully I eat according to the wacko prophetess”… er… well, you get the idea. Honest answers become dishonest when people want to look better than they really are. And at that point, the data is less than worthless, and way too misleading.

(Central Florida Bob ) #9

They get the same thing with “look how I eat like I’m supposed to” … like the food pyramid … or My Plate, or like everyone just knows they should eat.

(Bean) #10

My peer group has a lot of vegans/ vegetarians. I’ve seen an alarming number of aggressive neurological problems among them. And those do seem to hit around 65-70. Things that would be mild in other people.

Also some crazy. It’s a small sample size to be sure, but enough for me to see that veganism is dangerous.

One of my friends (and now department chair) is an on again, off again vegan. A few weeks ago she came to work with a rash-y face and was trying to figure out what was causing it… turns out she was on again as a vegan. She still doesn’t know what the specific trigger is, but I suspect she won’t do any more stints as a vegan. It worked well enough for her as a young person, but clearly doesn’t now.

(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #11

Oh I’d love to eat a vegetarian diet … no really, I would. And once I did!
Then I got diabetes and got real.
I assume many people are like the old me, they really want a veg diet to be the best. Sadly it’s not. Shame but sometimes the truth hurts.

#12

I was quite happy with my vegetarian diet - until I realized my body loves extreme low net non-animal carbs best… :slight_smile: But a mere vegetarian diet can be a health-conscious keto diet with lots of animal food and that almost worked for me… I think back fondly to my vegetarian and mostly vegetariandecades, I still can’t see any problem with lack of meat. In general, at least. It can be different in individual cases, there is a reason I am not a vegetarian anymore despite I don’t think I need meat. I just need very low-carb and that’s not possible without meat. And there are so many advantages of staying close to carnivore for me… :slight_smile: It’s good when one try things and quickly see what works. It can be so super impactful that guidelines lose all their power - though it’s not like I ever cared much about them… But I feel so much better on the right diet, it’s clear what to do (and I may or may not do that but humans are complicated).

(Alec) #13

My eternal regret is that it took me 57 years to learn that all plants are toxic to everyone. More toxic to some than others, but always inflammatory and toxic to some degree.

I now understand, and plants are off the menu for me. Forever.

I am not going to waste my time reading a paper written by the evil Willett. He and his advice has probably killed millions of people.