Diets secrets from two of the world's oldest men

Two of the world’s oldest men died recently. One was 116 year old Kimura Jiroemon of Japan, the other, 114 year old Walter Breuning of Montana, America. Their ages were verified by birth records and both died of pneumonia, which generally means ‘old age’ or general failure of the immune system. The two appear to have retained alertness until they died.

What I found particularly interesting was the main reason these two men gave for their great ages and superior health. Both men maintained that eating only small amounts of food was the key to a long healthy life.

Studies prove lifespan extended 50%

This truth of this diet advice from these elderly men has been backed up by repeated animal studies over the years. These studies, mostly with mice, have consistently demonstrated that a 25% calorie restriction (compared to normal appetite) extends lifespan about 50%.

The average New Zealand male life expectancy is 80 years, so a 50% increase could equal about 120 years in human terms.

My experiment with only two meals a day

So out of curiosity I recently began experimenting eating just two meals a day – breakfast at 9am and a main meal at 3pm. However, I soon found that two larger than normal meals created digestive discomfort and sluggishness and also defeated the purpose of cutting down calories.

I then woke up to the fact that I had to change my mindset. Instead of trying to get the full RDI from my food each day by eating from all food groups, I should instead just eat what I most felt like eating at any given mealtime.

In other words listen to the body’s cravings. Do I really need nuts every day, or pumpkin seeds, or fish every second day? What I don’t eat one day, I can eat the next and also my daily CAA-Multi capsule will compensate for our modern nutrient-barren foods. So I cut down my food intake by about 25% and ate what I felt most like eating.

At the end of the first week I had dropped a surplus kg of weight and had not felt hungry once. So far so good, but combining too many food groups in one sitting didn’t feel right. So I began looking into and experimenting with food combining principles (which I’ve been sceptical of in the past).

There have been some interesting results. I’ll report back in a future article.

Walter Breuning told American reporters

“Eat only two meals a day, work as long as you can, help others.”

Kimura Jiroemon told Japanese reporters

“Small portions of food were the key to a long and healthy life.”