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What we eat probably impacts our health more than any other single factor, according to a medical doctor and CEO of a longevity company who shared his diet with Business Insider.
Alongside exercise, food is a pillar of longevity because we consume it multiple times a day and it impacts everything from the gut microbiome to cholesterol and the constitution of cells, said Dr. Joseph Antoun, the CEO of L-Nutra, a longevity-focused nutrition company.
Antoun said diet can play a large role in reducing the risk of developing diseases that are among the leading causes of death in the US. These include: heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and Alzheimer's, according to CDC data.
He follows the Longevity Diet, created by his colleague and L-Nutra cofounder Valter Longo, a professor of gerontology and director of the USC Longevity Institute. It's mainly a plant-based diet but includes fish a few times a week, plus lots of complex carbohydrates, and healthy fats from nuts, Antoun said.
It's similar to the Mediterranean Diet, which one study suggested could add up to 10 years to a person's life.
Antoun shared three dietary principles he follows in the hope of living a long, healthy life.
Nuts are a good source of plant-based protein, complex carbs, and healthy fats, Antoun said. He eats them pretty much every day.
For breakfast, Antoun has nuts and a cup of coffee with a splash of oat or almond milk. He either has L-Nutra's Prolon Fasting bar, which is made of walnuts, almonds, macadamia nuts, and a little bit of honey, or just whole nuts.
Occasionally he has his company's Longevity Spread, which is made of mainly almonds and cocoa powder, on wholewheat bread.
Research suggests that eating nuts regularly could lower the risk of cardiovascular disease. A large 2017 study, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, looked at data on more than 200,000 people across 32 years and found that those who ate nuts five or more times a week had a 14% lower risk of cardiovascular disease and a 20% lower risk of coronary heart disease than people who never or almost never did.
Nuts have been found to lower the risk of high blood pressure, reduce "bad" cholesterol, and decrease the risk of blood clots that can lead to heart attack or stroke, according to The Mayo Clinic.
Antoun mainly eats plant-based protein including nuts, beans, and chickpeas.
There's compelling evidence to suggest that a diet high in plants could boost longevity. In a 2023 study published in JAMA Network Open, 22 pairs of twins were randomly assigned either a healthy vegan diet or a healthy omnivorous diet for eight weeks.
At the end of the study, the vegan twins had significantly lower "bad" cholesterol levels, as well as insulin and body weight — all of which are associated with improved cardiovascular health — than their omnivorous counterparts.
Another large study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found that shifting 3% of calorie intake from animal protein to plant protein appeared to lower the risk of death from any cause by 10%.
Another part of Longo's Longevity Diet, and the central tenant of L-Nutra's business model, is intermittent fasting. According to Longo's website, dieters must confine all eating to a twelve-hour period and shouldn't eat three to four hours before bedtime.
Antoun does this to make sure he's fasting for 12 hours every day. "I don't eat overnight. It's very important for me to have my dinner around seven and then stay all the way the next day until seven, eight o'clock up until I have my breakfast," he said.
Fasting diets are popular with CEOs, celebrities, and biohacking bros, who hope it will help with weight loss, longevity, and improved focus. But as BI previously reported, actual evidence is lagging behind the huge interest in fasting.
Studies on animals suggest that calorie restriction through fasting could boost longevity. This is understood to be because of a process known as autophagy, in which cells start to shed old, unusable parts when deprived of nutrients. But there's limited evidence that the result is the same in humans.
