[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.)

[andrewinardeer]

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

[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.

[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.

[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/

[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.)

[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...