[lokrian]

Some people seem to not just survive, but actually thrive on terrible, junk food diets, like the current president, or Warren Buffett (who eats ice cream and mcdonald's for breakfast and 2 liters of cherry coke every day, and is still alive at 95) https://www.businessinsider.com/warren-buffett-diet-2017-10

Diet really does seem to be one of those highly individualistic things, and I'm guessing humanity is in an evolutionary transition from paleolithic type diets to mcdonalds 3 times day, with different people having the genes to thrive on different things. You just have to see what works for you.

[N_Lens]

Picking anecdotal exceptions doesn't indicate broad genetic differences that allow people to "thrive on junk".

Everyone has heard of someone who smoked and drank and lived to a hundred. That doesn't mean smoking and drinking aren't harmful for health; Infact overwhelming evidence clearly shows their harm. Same goes for unhealthy food, and we broadly see the impact statistically as well as viscerally.

[userbinator]

Everyone has heard of someone who smoked and drank and lived to a hundred

It's interesting that the oldest known human to have lived (122!) smoked too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment

Calment continued smoking in her elderly years until she was 117

But I'd say she is definitely an extreme genetic outlier, and would not bet that she could've lived longer had she not smoked.

(Disclaimer: non-smoker and no interest in doing so either, for other reasons.)

[swiftcoder]

Worth noting that there is some controversy about whether Jeanne Calment was actually 122, or it was a case of her daughter Yvonne assuming her identity to commit pension fraud...

This is apparently endemic in the so-called "blue zones" where folks routinely live well past 100 on paper, but its thought that many folks are exploiting poor record keeping in the past to keep drawing their pension checks

[userbinator]

If it was her daughter, she still lived to 99, which is above average and even more so for a regular smoker.

[nprateem]

> Disclaimer: non-smoker and no interest in doing so either, for other reasons

A better word would be "irrelevant"

[andrewinardeer]

My anecdotal experience is there are no long term full time cigarette smokers over the age of 70 because they all died.

[latexr]

Fran Lebowitz, avid cigarette smoker, 74 and counting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran_Lebowitz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGcG7e03Nts

[andrewinardeer]

Yes, I did see her speak earlier in the year. You're right. Some are just built different.

[ikidd]

Haha, my uncle lived to 94 smoking like it was a cure for cancer, and I've seen a picture of him filling a sprayer with 2,4D with no PPE and a smoke hanging out of his mouth.

[sillyfluke]

My anecdotal experience is they were all over 70 but not over 80 -- chain smokers who started when they were children. I'm curious if anyone here knows any in their 80s or 90s.

[znpy]

My grandfather from the south of italy. He died at 85, used to smoke two packs a day until about three days before dying (he wasn't allowed to smoke in the hospital). He did not die from any form of cancer, he died for an intestinal blockage. I don't remember the details, it's been many years ago. From what he told me he started around age 8, stealing his father's tobacco.

The thing is, these stories rarely show the full picture (and they hardly can).

For example: my grandfather was very active for an old person, he kept working in his coutryside until the age of 78-79. That meant a lot of moving around, lifting large buckets of fruit in spring and summer or huge sacks of olives in autumn and winter. At age 75 he was probably way more active than the average user of this forum. He wasn't "fit" by modern beauty standards, but nonetheless he was "functionally" fit.

As far as I know, he started working in the countryside when he lost his father around age 13 (society was different back then) to support his family (his mother and his younger sister).

Btw he still developed senile dementia roughly around the time he stopped working in the countryside.

Smoking alone is a risk factor (and a huge one) but that factor usually has to be put into context.

EDIT Just to disambiguate: I'm not defending smoking, in any way. My main point is that "full picture" is often missing from the "they smoked and lived" stories.

[esseph]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45081132

[rsynnott]

... Are you giving anecdotal evidence against the anecdotal evidence the other person gave?

[imiric]

Those are outliers. It doesn't mean that these foods are healthy for the average person.

There are documented cases of people living well into their 80s while having smoked cigarettes since their teens. Same thing. It doesn't invalidate the millions of deaths each year that are directly caused by tobacco.

Also, wealth plays a larger role in living longer than genetics. It gives access to the best medicine and physicians money can buy, which are not accessible to the average person.

[lokrian]

Please tell us what FDA approved medications Buffett has been on for the past 70 years that aren't available to the rest of us and have allowed him to cope with ice cream for breakfast every morning.

[imiric]

Being wealthy and powerful doesn't constrain you to the health care system of a single country. It also allows you to be at the top of any priority lists for treatments and interventions.

And, as a sibling comment mentions, marketing plays a big role with these individuals, so it's impossible to ascertain the truth of their claims.

[BobaFloutist]

When people discuss the impacts of wealth on health, they're almost always talking about assessments and procedures, not prescriptions.

[vixen99]

Not that individualistic. We have tables giving upper and lower limits for around 26 nutrients for daily intake. These tables are published by dozens of countries which mostly did their own research over decades. The tables are pretty much consistent with very little variation. Grok offers a rough estimate of between 10 and 50 million subjects used to determine these values. When you say 'you just have to see what works for you' that’s fine if the ‘what’ is a container (food) that provides content (nutrients) within the limits that extensive research has found to work. With a few very odd exceptions our biochemistry is consistent.

[eviks]

> to not just survive, but actually thrive on terrible, junk food diets, like the current president

What are your indicators of "thriving"???

[verisimi]

Re trump and buffett, we have no idea what they actually eat, unless you are in contact with them or their chefs. That buffett says he drinks 2 litres of cherry coke everyday, should be taken with a large pinch of salt, given he is such a large shareholder in the company. This is marketing.

[hackerbeat]

Agreed. Buffett always just mentioned enjoying a single burger and can of Coke a day.

[nkurz]

I have no idea about the burger, but for the Coke I don't think that's true.

Here's one of many sources saying that he drinks 5 cans a day:

https://www.businessinsider.com/warren-buffett-diet-2017-10

What's your source for him always mentioning the single can amount?

[hackerbeat]

His biography.

[imiric]

Right. Particularly Trump, who lives in a perpetual bubble of lies and disinformation.

[WA]

- But you won’t know what works for you before you had your first heart attack.

- If your claim was true, shouldn’t the data be more flat and not show an increase in mortality? Or do you suggest that only few people have these genes? Survivorship bias probably has the greater effect here.

- Buffet and Trump are probably closely monitored by doctors and get way better treatments (although my grand dad wasn’t closely monitored and survived to 91 on 2 liters of coke, too, but had quite a few ailments)

[amriksohata]

This is a good point, its because of a mix of gut bacteria and the genetic composition of individuals - but the ultra good ones like that example are few and far between

[CWIZO]

Evolution doesn't work over a span of few generations. If humans are evolving to adapt to the modern weetern diet then we won't see that for a very very very long time.

You're just cherry picking examples while ignoring a mountain of literature that shows exactly the opposite of what you're saying.

[esseph]

> evolution doesn't work over a span of a few generations.

Yes it can

> Over the past two decades, it has become clear that evolutionary change can be fast enough to be observed in present-day populations (Hendry and Kinnison 1999; Kinnison and Hendry 2001; Hendry et al. 2008; Gingerich 2009) and that it can directly affect the dynamics of populations and communities (Hairston et al. 2005; Saccheri and Hanski 2006; Kinnison and Hairston 2007; Pelletier et al. 2009). Much recent interest has focused on the possibility that so-called rapid or contemporary evolution leads to ‘evolutionary rescue’, whereby threatened populations avoid extinction by adapting to an altered environment (Barrett and Hendry 2012; Gonzalez et al. 2013).

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3894905/

[CWIZO]

It'd be surprising if that applies in this context. In the case of the individuals OP mentions, their parents would not have been exposed to ultra processed food (or barely, perhaps only after they've reproduced), so ehatever gens they passed on would not have been adapted. There's simply not enough generations in this case. Especially not for such significant changes.

In any case, it's moot as by and large the westeren diet is not good for the population, exceptions are simply that.

[esseph]

My great grandparents in the US were eating diets of ultra processed foods. Soda Shopes, hot dogs, sausages, hamburgers, Spam, boxed spaghetti, hamburger helper, Jello molds with canned fruit in them, etc.

My great grandfather in particular used to smoke a box of King Edward cigars a week, and lived mostly on a diet of plain bologna sandwiches on plain white bread, and candy corn.

[spaceman_2020]

My dad is 81 years old and if you see his diet and sleeping habits, you’d think this man would be morbidly obese and unhealthy. He eats deep fried foods almost every second day, has a massive sweet tooth, sleeps at 2-3AM, almost never works out

And yet he is the healthiest 81 year old I’ve ever seen. Amazing blood work, no blood pressure or cardiovascular issues, and is mentally 100% the same as he was 20 years ago.

I really don’t think conventional medical science can explain it

[AstralStorm]

Not quite to the level of explain, but what one only needs is an excellent liver. This is mostly a matter of yet unknown genetics. We know a few variants where different variants of classes of lipids are made reducing the risk for cardiovascular disease...

If you have a bad one like myself, you go decent diet and still have metabolic syndrome by 20. (No diabetes at least. Yet.)

[spaceman_2020]

My dad has never touched a drop of alcohol. That might have something to do with it too

[scarab92]

Kind of disappointing to see this at the top.

Not only have you cherry picked anecdotes to support this, but you don’t have a counter factual, e.g. maybe someone who survives until 95 on junk food would have lived until 105 on healthy food.

[AngryData]

I don't buy that eating McDonalds or ice cream or pop even regularly is inherently bad for you. People don't call a loaf of bread junk food, but is mostly just starches and sugars. A McDonalds burger may have a lot of fat and calories, but it still has beef in it which has lots of nutrients. Pop may be mostly just calories from sugar, but nobody is drinking pop as their only source of food and if your other foods are nutrient dense, I don't see much of a difference.

[QuantumFunnel]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S277241662...