LONGEVITA translates to "Long Life" in Italian
 

LONGEVITA.........Translates to "long life" in Italian.

My older generation of Italian relatives and ancestors also lived to ripe old ages, into their late nineties and late eighties.

There was no cancer at all in my father's Italian/Greek/French family (nor in my mother's Ukrainian family.)

However, those were the generations that did not dine out, but prepared their simple foods from scratch........heavy on the vegetables and legumes.......seafood and meat for special occasions, but not "high on the hog" every day.

**There was no frozen or prepared packaged foods back in their day; no drive up windows of fast food restaurants (which did not exist, obviously).

**Thus, no additives, preservatives, flavor enhancers, colors, etc. and certainly no chemicals.

In doing my ancestry, the ones who died young, either passed away at birth or shortly thereafter.......or in farming accidents.

Other ethnic groups around the Mediterranean also enjoyed longevity or "longevita".

I'm pretty sure the home made red wine (vino) helped keep their arteries open.

They were the last generation prior to everyone having a little colored pill for every body part.......and every minor ailment (with side effects that contributed to more issues and more little pills). We continue to be flabbergasted listening, each evening, to the Big Pharma commercials and myriad of warnings and side effects after a glorious presentation of WHY WE SHOULD TAKE ALL OF THESE PHARMACEUTICALS. They lived long WITHOUT them.

PORTUGAL AND LONGEVITY By James Martin

January 3, 2009

Until a few days ago, Tomar, Portugal was the home of the world's oldest known living human, Maria de Jesus. She attained the age 115 years and 114 days until passing away in an ambulance Friday.

Then comes word that Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira turned 100 recently while working on his 47th film in Lisbon’s Chiado district called "The Uniqueness of a Young Blond-Haired Girl."

I figure it's the copious amounts of vegetables found in Portuguese cuisine.

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MORE:

The Mediterranean Diet region includes many countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea including most famously France, Greece, Italy, Morocco Spain, Turkey, as well as other countries in Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle East.

Europe: Portugal, Spain, Gibraltar (British overseas territory), France, Monaco, Italy, Malta, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, Greece, Cyprus, Akrotiri and Dhekelia, Turkey (partly Asia).

Asia/Middle East: Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Israel.

Africa: Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco.

As you can imagine, there is a wide range of cultural and food traditions unique to each country. However, there are still many common ingredients connecting the longevity influencing diets of each country. Durum wheat pasta may be served as spaghetti in Italy, but adorn the plates in Morocco as couscous or be used as a pita in Greece.

Other common ingredients or food items include olive oil, use of fresh herbs, legumes, fresh fruit and vegetables, and mineral rich sea salt.

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I'm sure others among you can add the names of many others who lived to a ripe old age........but thought I'd contribute the Portuguese ones above.

The reason Social Security is in need of fine tuning is that people are living longer than ever before. True, obesity may affect this longevity in the future, but right now people are living longer. Modern medicine, often criticized, has done wonders for eradicating or ameliorating many of the diseases that killed people in their youth as well as in their forties and fifties back in "the good old days."

Life goes on for the families that bond together
 

Yes, in "the good old days" many women died in childbirth, or else the infant did not survive.

Modern medicine has insured less infant fatalities.....plus healthier moms.

However, some families did live on, even in adverse conditions.
Genetics? Family unity? Faith? Keeping young at heart?

My dad's family was one big merry clan and the door was always open.........the family was huge.........I doubt if they were ever lonely.

Our generation moved away from the cities to the suburbs or even out of state to small towns. We became nuclear families. Our children became everything to us, in our neat tidy modern worlds, whereas in the old days the children had a huge number of family close at hand. A mob of relatives fussing over them.

SO............

Why do some people live so much longer than the rest of us????
The quest to find out is alive and well.............

http://www.bu.edu/bostonia/fall09/longevity/
LIFE GOES ON.........for the three families depicted in this article.
Please keep scrolling down to their photos and ages......activities, philosophies on life in general. Amazing folks. A great read.
Very inspirational.......

This is one of the most uplifting family stories I have read in a very long time.

Please take the time to read it. It will be worth the effort and time spent.

It helped me to recognize that the longevity and continuance of certain family lines is hereditary.....for sure.
The comfort they take in being together is wonderful. The quintessential family.........

Anecdotal information is certainly very interesting and often heartwarming, but it is not scientific. Many people live longer today because heart disease, cancer, and other disases are being controlled better than they were in the past. Many men and women who would have died in the past are now living into their eighties and nineties. Look around The Villages and you will see many senior citizens leading healthy, active lives. It certainly is interesting to hear that "Gramps" who came from the "old country" and smoked a pack of unfiltered camels a day lived to be ninety one, but that doesn't mean that the average person back then lived as long as they do today. Healthy eating habits and exercise can add to this good, modern medical care. I am very glad that I am living today rather than back fifty years ago.

Generations of kids will live shorter lives than their parents
 

What came first? The chicken or the egg?
Why does everyone need meds today?
It literally begins in childhood with the American diet.

Katie Couric had an interesting show this afternoon, May 8, 2014 re "FED UP" which premiered at Sundance Film Festival.

The film upends the conventional wisdom of why we gain weight and lays bare the misinformation put forth on how to lose it.

It reveals that far more of the American public gets sick from what they eat than anyone realized.

The film traces the history of processed foods adding dangerous levels of sugar and sweeteners to their roster of ingredients. (It began in the late 1970s with the rise of low-fat foods and has intensified since then.)

With the film's acquisition, Couric hopes, will come amended personal habits and public policies.


'''GENERATIONS OF KIDS WILL LIVE SHORTER LIVES THAN THEIR PARENTS'''


'Fed Up'

The premise: Unflattering documentary about the American food industry suggests that today’s children will have shorter lives than their parents because of their diets.

Directed by: Stephanie Soechtig
Length: 1 hour, 32 minutes
Rated: PG for mature themes, smoking and language.

GEOFF BERKSHIRE, VARIETY: ★★★ Accessibility trumps artistry in "Fed Up," a formulaic and functional documentary that nevertheless proves effective at getting the message out about America’s addiction to unhealthy food. Focusing specifically on childhood obesity, the insidious practices of big food companies and the lack of political will to address the problems, Stephanie Soechtig’s film is the latest in a long line of call-to-action docs following in the footsteps of "An Inconvenient Truth" (and boasts that film’s executive producer, Laurie David, to boot). Slick execution and big-name participants, including narrator Katie Couric and an interview with former President Bill Clinton, put the pic in prime position to become one of the year’s highest-profile commercial docs.
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PARK CITY, Utah - Katie Couric is fed up.

Like the title of the documentary she executive produced and narrated at Sundance, Couric is angry about the global epidemic of childhood obesity and the government's role in its spread.

"The amount of attention paid to public health is minuscule compared to the amount of attention the government pays to promoting U.S. agriculture," says Couric.

One of the most talked-about films at Sundance, Fed Up is described as the film the food industry doesn't want people to see.

It could be the movie that will change the way people think about eating.
The documentary details how, since the U.S. government issued its first dietary guideline 30 years ago, the rate of obesity has skyrocketed. Generations of kids will live shorter lives than their parents.

The film upends the conventional wisdom of why we gain weight and lays bare the misinformation put forth on how to lose it. It reveals that far more of the American public gets sick from what they eat than anyone realized.

The film traces the history of processed foods adding dangerous levels of sugar and sweeteners to their roster of ingredients. (It began in the late 1970s with the rise of low-fat foods and has intensified since then.)
With the film's acquisition, Couric hopes, will come amended personal habits and public policies.

"We'd like to see this shown in schools, in parent meetings, PTAs," says Couric. "I think it will change the way people buy food. It will change the way they consume food and it will change the way they think about food. And I think that is what's going to be required to really start dealing with this issue."

The hope is that a shift can occur, as has happened in other health and safety arena.

"We want people to see that there's hope," says Soechtig. "This can be fixed. We have these food fighters who are making differences on a local level. If we use tobacco as an example this is not as far-fetched as the food industry is portraying it. Look at seat-belt laws and car-seat laws. It happened before. It can happen now."

Doctors bemoan the rise of adult-onset diabetes in young children, as well as children suffering strokes and heart attacks at a very young age, due to their excessive intake of sugar.

Fed Up lays bare a decades-long misinformation campaign orchestrated by Big Food and aided and abetted by the U.S. government.

"How can you set dietary guidelines and also be responsible for promoting U.S. agriculture, especially when some of that agriculture means unhealthy products," Couric asked. "Whoever set that up probably did not realize that you could not serve two masters in that way."
　
　
　

I suppose it depends on how you look at it. If you look at one individual, whether he/she lives a healhy lifestyle or not, there's no way you can pinpoint how long that person will live. Someone who seems to live a healthy lifestyle may die at a younger than expected age and visa versa.

But when you look at various studies of large groups of people, who live different lifestyles, you will see some informative differences. For example, the life expectancy of Mexicans is quite different than the life expectancy of the Japanese. Mexico has a world life expectancy ranking of 63. Japan has a world life expectancy ranking of 1.

So if you want to live longer, your chances will likely be better if you adopt a Japanese lifestyle. And you could find out the details of such a lifestyle by reading The Okinawa Program. Seventh Day Adventists have a ten year longer lifespan than the average American. They are vegans and vegitarians.