Still Able

You have seen the map. Five circles, five regions, five diets said to produce extraordinary lifespans. In 2024 the Ig Nobel prize for demography went to a researcher who showed that the data underneath it does not hold. Okinawa, the most cited of the five, eats the fewest vegetables in Japan and has the highest body mass index in Japan, according to Japan's own national figures. Across the world, reported extreme old age tracks with poverty, missing birth certificates and fewer ninety-year-olds, which is the pattern you get from bad paperwork rather than good living. So what is left? Rather a lot, and it is dull, cheap and well evidenced. Enough protein, which after sixty-five is more than the standard adult figure and is usually missing at breakfast. Enough fibre, which for most people means close to doubling it. Less ultra-processed food, achieved by adding rather than forbidding. And enough total food, because after seventy the real danger is eating too little, not too much. Then the part the industry does not sell. The largest number in this book is not attached to any food. In a study of 70,913 people, those highest in both cardiorespiratory fitness and grip strength had 47 percent lower all-cause mortality. The dietary effects here sit in the 10 to 30 percent range by comparison. Protein without training is material delivered for a job nobody ordered. Every figure names its source in the text. Where the evidence is observational it says so, including for the numbers this book likes most. There is a chapter teaching you to weigh the next claim yourself, and it is aimed at this book too. With twenty meals that hit the protein and fibre targets, from several food traditions, and a chapter for readers who have lost their appetite, their sense of taste, their teeth or their spare money, which almost every book in this genre pretends does not happen. No supplement is recommended. No food is called a cure. Nothing here requires a subscription.

• Why the five-circle longevity map tracks birth certificates more closely than diet
• The protein figure for over-65s, why it is higher than the standard one, and the meal where it is missing
• How much fibre the evidence actually points to, and the cheapest way to get there
• What the ultra-processed food research shows, and what its own authors say it does not show
• Why fitness and grip strength carry a larger number than anything on your plate
• What the supplement aisle is selling, and the one question that deflates it
• What a one-year trial found about time-restricted eating, and who it is wrong for
• Six questions that let you judge the next health claim without help
• Twenty meals that hit the targets, from several food traditions
• How to eat when appetite, taste, teeth or money have gone

• Anyone past forty who would like to still be carrying their own shopping at eighty
• People tired of longevity advice that costs a hundred a month
• Readers who want the sources named so they can check them
• Anyone caring for an older parent who has stopped eating properly
• People who want to know which of the famous claims actually survive scrutiny

1. 01Before you start
2. 02Part One: The story that does not hold
3. 03Part Two: What actually holds up
4. 04Part Three: The thing that beats all of it
5. 05Part Four: What is being sold to you
6. 06Part Five: Doing it
7. 07Closing: The only four things
8. 08Appendix One: Twenty meals that hit the numbers
9. 09Appendix Two: The sources, named

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