Longevity Doctor Valter Longo’s Real Life Diet, Who Wants You to Eat Right Before Bed

Dr. Valter Longo is an Italian-American scientist and researcher – currently a professor of gerontology and biological sciences and director of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California. The 56-year-old is also the director of the Oncology and Longitudinal Laboratory at the Institute of Molecular Oncology IFOM in Milan, so he divides his time between Los Angeles and Italy.

His 2018 book, “The Longevity Diet,” is a New York Times The retailer recommends a plant-based diet that includes fish, with just two meals a day plus one small snack, ideally within a 12-hour window. (Longo believes this method is superior to (the 16:8 intermittent fasting diet that has gained popularity in recent years.)

As part of the Longevity Diet, Longo also recommends that you “eat at the table of your ancestors,” focusing on the foods that your parents, grandparents, and fathers ate. – the elderly who eat them, as they are compatible with Long-Term Foods. For Longo, whose ancestors are Italian, this includes eating “lots of tomatoes, green beans, garbanzo beans and olive oil.”

The book also recommends a “fasting-mimicking diet,” (FMD) a 4-5 day period of eating a diet high in fat but low in calories, protein and carbs. It is intended to reflect the effects of a water fast only while providing enough calories to be considered safe outside of clinical settings. In a randomized study conducted at the USC medical center, people who used FMD five days a month for three months showed improvements in muscle mass, cholesterol, blood pressure and other areas.

As Longo writes in the book, there are many people who should not do FMD, such as pregnant women, people with low body weight, and people with liver or kidney diseases. For those who choose to try FMD, Longo suggests that “it’s best under the supervision of a registered dietitian or physician.”

GQ caught up with Longo to hear more about his daily routine, his research, and why he recommends getting all your meals within a 12-hour window.

For Real Life Foods, GQ interviews athletes, celebrities, and other high-profile athletes about their diet, exercise routines, and fitness goals. Remember that what works for them may not work for you.

---

GQ: What does a typical eating day look like for you?

Dr. Walter Longo: I came up with something called the Longevity Diet and followed it with some recipes, but not too many. So it starts with: I have this old grain. It is called friselle. It’s the bread I get from Southern Italy, in a nearby area called Alta Mura, where they make the best bread in the world. I combine that with another thing that comes from this part of the world, which is the abundance of almonds. So it’s a whole grain friselle with an almond product very high in almonds and cocoa and nothing else. Then I am given an apple and tea. I mix green tea with black tea. So that’s my breakfast.

What is the reason for mixing green and black tea?

Because I love the health benefits of green tea. I don’t really like the taste, and I like the taste of black tea better. So that was my way of getting both. I have been doing that for a long time.

How did you get to breakfast?

I spend all my time thinking about how to make people live longer. Whole grains provide a lot of nutrition, and at the same time, they taste good to me. We have a lot of basic clinics, and that’s what we focus on: not just giving people something healthy, but something that’s healthy and people will enjoy it for years, if not life. all of them. That, for me, is all the grain from the Italian region, where I come from, I try to choose the region where they make the best bread in Italy.