This story is from Handbook, GQ’s flagship e-newsletter providing helpful recommendation on model, well being, and extra, 4 days per week. Join right here to get it in your inbox.Hacking one’s well being within the identify of longevity can typically result in an unyielding assortment of developments, takes, and ideas every another unaligned with one another. Do a chilly plunge. Sit in a sauna. Stroll 10,000 steps a day. Bryan Johnson, chief of the Don’t Die regime, pops dietary supplements like sweet—however, after all, he’s not consuming any sweet.On the subject of consuming, and particularly how what we eat impacts how lengthy we dwell, the knowledge on the market relating to any hyperlinks between food regimen and longevity may be equally conflicting. Some individuals will let you know to eat a lot of meat. Others are on document saying that isn’t precisely the case. (“Meat is like radiation,” Walter Willett, a Harvard T.H. Chan Faculty of Public Well being diet researcher, as soon as mentioned. “We don’t know the protected stage.”)Walter Longo, director of the Longevity Institute on the College of Southern California, even spells out exactly what to do if you wish to dwell a very long time. It’s proper there on his web site, the place the primary line reads, “Eat largely vegan.” Protein consumption? Low. When to eat? Follow a fasting food regimen, confining all meals between 8 a.m. and eight p.m.What, you may ask, are we alleged to do then, if the concept is to optimize a food regimen within the identify of our well being in order that we are able to dwell an extended, wholesome life?“Definitely there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all food regimen that’s finest for everybody,” says Dr. Frank Hu, Harvard professor of diet and epidemiology. “The excellent news is there are totally different patterns that may assist forestall continual illness and enhance longevity.”Preserve It RealBy far, the overarching precept throughout all diets, for those who’re trying to dwell an extended life largely freed from illness, needs to be the elimination of ultraprocessed meals. Packaged snacks, cookies, fast-food burgers, soda—all are examples of the kind of meals that can do extra hurt to your physique, no matter how good a sleeve of chocolate chip cookies may style within the second.“These days ultraprocessed meals are all over the place and ubiquitous in our meals provide, however they’re very excessive in sugar, sodium, and unhealthy fat,” says Hu.Go to the Outdated CountryThe Mediterranean Food regimen is often promoted as the most effective diets on the market for stopping continual illness and preserving cardiac well being. Limiting the consumption of dairy merchandise whereas upping the quantity of fish and meals excessive in omega-3s, are two pointers of the food regimen.In the meantime, the food regimen’s different key characteristic is listening to the varieties of fat and carbs you eat versus eliminating them completely. Consuming further virgin olive oil is a giant a part of consuming such as you’re in Italy. “It’s not simply helpful by way of reducing your ldl cholesterol,” Hu says. “It might forestall different continual illnesses, like dementia or Alzheimer’s.”