My French/Scottish/Canadian Grandmother lived to 103. My other three grandparents died fairly young.

Given Italian parentage maternal and paternal had me joking that growing up I believed the entire world was Italian. Really our small city had a broad cross section of ethnicity. Most adhered to their cultural diets. and customs. Some lived long lives while others died prematurely. I have seen children who have died before their parents and people who seemed in perfect health fall suddenly.

Experts vacillate on advice. suddenly now experts are moving away from diet as the cure to perhaps it ll has to do with an overall healthy lifestye. I mean what does it do to be a vagan when your sedinary and a big boozer

I don't believe you will find many Vegans that are sedentary and big boozers. That lifestyle takes a tremendous amount of work shopping and preparing food so they are very motivated to continue a healthy lifestyle in all regards.

My wife and I just got back from Delray beach where we attended a birthday party for her aunt who was 104 and while she is hard of hearing (the aunt, not the wife) she is still sharp as a tack. Her people come from Eastern Europe (Poland and Hungary) and are Ashkenazy Jews, a people that seem to have good genes. The surprising thing about the party is that the aunt had two of her friends with her, both were also Ashkenazy and both were also 104 years young! I assume that will be the only time in my life that I was in a room with three 104 year old people!

My mother in law is 98 years old and still going strong. Her mother lived to 101. Proud Germans. Brewed their own beer and wines and ate all the German foods daily. I miss grandma because she was the cook.

Okay, I've decided to play along with this non-scientific survey, although I'm not sure what the point of it is. Is it supposed to prove something? My parents and grandparents were Italian. What difference does nationality make? The Japanese in Okinawa have a great record for health and longevity because they practice a careful calorie-restricted diet.

The oldest person in my Italian family-tree was a man who was born in 1850 and died in 1956. I have no knowledge of what his lifestyle was. I had a great aunt who lived to 100. My grandfather lived to 97. One grandmother lived to 89. Two aunts lived to 89. Does anyone really care about all of this?

The word "obsess" is a loaded and biased word. How would I know for sure if my ancestors were obsessed or simply being careful? Both of my grandmothers had ideas about what was good and bad for health. My mother also had ideas of what was good and bad for health. So, naturally, they tried to do mostly good and minimize or eliminate the bad. Were they obsessed or simply being prudent? Because the word "obsess" was used, the survey is biased.

They didn't change much because like most people they were creatures of habit. They brought their simple eating habits with them from Italy.

I'm not sure exactly what qualifies as spartan. Furthermore, I wasn't with them every day. And most people reading this thread, like me, may not have accurate memories of what their grandparents ate on a daily basis. We mostly visited on weekends and special days when their diet may have been more liberal, or not so careful.

My paternal grandfather smoked a pipe and died when I was about three years old. He wasn't young but not too old either. He had a bleeding brain stroke and died on the way to the hospital.

My maternal grandfather lived the longest of all of my grandparents (97) and he was not at all religious. His wife (my grandmother) was very religious and lived a much shorter life than he did, suffering dementia in her final years. His mind stayed sharp until he died.

In my opinion, they had regular genes like everyone has. Some did well and others did poorly, just like many others on this board. Their genes responded to their lifestyle. They lived longer because they worked hard, did a lot of walking, and ate simple (mostly) unprocessed foods.

That's because they all worked hard and did a lot of walking. None of my grandparents had cars.

My great grandfather was German and lived to 101. He was a little feeble but was still sharp. I was 8 when he passed away. I remember him telling how he saw Abraham Lincoln's funeral train.

Just people having fun exchanging stories. It's interesting to hear about people's ancestors. :024:

On my dad's side, my Luxembourger grandfather lived to be 91 and my Luxembourger grandmother lived to be 93. Both were very sharp mentally up to the end. They raised 7 kids on a farm in eastern Iowa through the 1920's, The Great Depression and WWII. There was no electricity on the farm until the early 1940's, and there was no indoor plumbing on the farm while they were living there. My grandparents were devout Catholics, and once they moved to Dubuque in the early 1950's my grandmother walked to church bingo twice a week until she was well into her 80's.

On my mom's side the longevity record is not as good. My German maternal grandfather died in the 1930's when my mom was about 7. My Swedish maternal grandmother died in 1963 when she was in her early 70's.

I am hoping I inherited more of my dad's genes than my mom's genes as far as longevity goes...

................

Your story reminds me of my father's best friend. His Italian friend married a scottish woman and they had two sons.

Let me first say that genes should not be important if you eat a totally healthy diet. It's only when people eat a poor diet that genes for disease get triggered.

So, to continue my story: There were two sons from an Italian father and a scottish mother. No one could know which side of the family they got their genes from. But there's one way to find out: Have both of them eat a poor diet and see which one dies first. What a great experiment!! There was no heart disease on the father's side but I'm not sure about the mother's side.

Anyway, the father went into the fast food business and it was a family business. They all worked at it and grew fond of eating their own fast foods that they sold. Even at home they liked eating lots of fatty meats with plenty of butter on everything. Even though they all had excess weight on them, they all appeared to be healthy.

But one day the oldest son (in his early 40s) was climbing stairs to get to his second floor appartment and he just dropped dead from a sudden heart attack. That's a tough way to find out that you have a predisposition for heart disease.

If he had eaten a healthy diet low in saturated fat and processed foods he might have lived into his 70s or 80s. (Some people are born with few cholesterol receptors while others have more than enough.) The point is this: If you don't know for sure what diseases you have a predispoition for, the best thing you can do is eat a totally healthy diet, thereby lowering your risk for all diseases.

............

............

Village PL,
Thanks for playing along and sharing your touching remembrances with us. Very heartwarming!
:jester:

............