there’s always an exception….
I got to thinking about my ancient grandmother Hattie. “Ancient” because she was born in 1873. On the Today show and similar programs obesity is always discussed as a threat to longevity and I heard the phrase “there are no fat 80 yr olds” Well, come to think of it Hattie was a big old lady! She lived to be 95. What finally did her in was gall bladder surgery. Because of her age, she couldn’t fully recover and passed on a few months later.
The doctors should be studying the long-lived people to find common factors. In my grandmother’s time, consumer goods were for the wealthy. Which wasn’t my family. My grandfather had a job, a car and eventually a house- not a mansion. They didn’t live in a city. (I think all that coal smoke must have been terrible. )Everybody with the space had a garden, raised chickens, grew fruit trees. They bought flour, sugar, coffee, from stores, but I don’t think there was a lot of commercially processed food until the 1930s. Meat came from their own animals or local butcher shops. I know as my grandmother got older, she liked her junk food just as much as the rest of us- she loved KFC! But I’m thinking that the combination of rural lifestyle, lack of pollution and as far as I know, she didn’t drink or smoke, is what gave her a long life….
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