Edna Lived to 115 and Loved Meat & Fat!
I wanted to share this great little summary on the life of Edna Parker who recently passed away at the young age of 115!! Incredible. What was great about the article was the following quote:
Last year, Parker helped Guinness record another feat when she met another super-centenarian, then-113-year-old Bertha Fry of Muncie, Ind. The meeting took place at Parker’s nursing home a few days after her 114th birthday. A Guinness representative on hand to witness the event said their combined age of 227 was “the highest aggregate age of two people meeting each other.”
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels commended the two women, who both grew up on small Indiana farms, became schoolteachers and ate a lot of meat and starch over the course of their exceptionally long lives. Parker especially enjoyed eggs, sausage, bacon and fried chicken. “I guess we’ll have to rethink lard,” Daniels quipped after hearing about her high-fat diet.
Here’s 2 centurians who loved their meat and fat (along with some starches, my guess it was predominantly vegetable based mostly from corn and/or potatoes….since they grew up on farms). What you probably do NOT find is high amounts of sugar, processed foods or cooking with vegetable oils. Lard and butter were probably used the most for cooking and not vegetable oil based fats. Again this is just an educated guess seeing the quote above lard and thinking about living on a farm.
Wonderful stuff. Moral of the story….meat doesn’t give you heart disease, fat (stable cooking fat like the sat fat in lard/butter) is good, and sugary/processed foods & drinks are not present in most people’s diet who live long and healthy. I’m sure she also kept an active lifestyle as much as she could while also not excessively overeating. Maybe it’s time we all go back to farm living! Ok maybe not going to happen but at least we can imagine we are.
Other good related reading about meat, fat and longevity from past articles:
Why Your Doctor is Wrong About Meat
Jack Lalanne Speaks, We Should Listen
Lessons from Luigi, How to Live to 102
The Inuit Paradox. High Fat/Protein & Low Cancer/Heart Disease
The Longevity Gene and Fasting/CR/Ageing
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Great story.
I work for the ambulance service and see people most days that are well into the 80′s, 90′s and some centurions that have smoked since their teens but aren’t being admitted for lung disease but other things like fractures etc. Some people have phenomenal genetics that can withstand almost any bad habit they choose.
Fair play to her I say.
Regards,
Dan.
Nice story indeed,
Always amazing to read about the long lives of others.
I love this story.
There are many factors involved in long life. Some we have control over and some we don’t. Most people tend to have diets along cultural lines. Examples: Italian, Hispanics, African Americans, etc. There are those that live a long life in any of these cultural environments.
The problem is that far too many in these groups suffer tremendous health issues related to these diets. Rising obesity among African Americans and Hispanics is just one example. Genetics does play a role as well.
My position is that non of us should dump meats from our diets, but we should limit the portions per day. We should demand more choices of meats without the preservatives and hormones. In the old days, non of these were present.
Keep up the good work.
I read this story the other day. Apparently at age 100+ she was still climbing ladders and replacing light bulbs. Her health didn’t start really deteriorating until her kids made her move in with them! Probably banned her from eggs and bacon and switched her to oatmeal and pancakes
The SoG
I think that when you get up to that age, having the will to keep on living is really important. Surely, her diet of whole foods allowed her to get to that ripe old age, but I’ll bet she had a zest for life that kept her going mentally. Good for you Edna!
All the Best,
Andrew
Regarding the food comments. I feel that eating natural, whole foods is ideal. However, especially in our time of processed and readily available food, I just think it’s really hard for experts to pinpoint exactly which foods are causing us the most harm. Its seems like butter is good for you one day and bad the next. Eggs used to be a great source of protein and fats, then everyone stopped eating them due to the cholesterol in them. I think it’s a lot more complicated than just saying 1 specific food caused this or that health issue.
-JC
Probably banned her from eggs and bacon and switched her to oatmeal and pancakes
I’d suspect it rather was the polluted air, less sun, less activity, no more self grown food in the city.
Maybe also things like electrosmog and all the sh*t you don’t have to worry about on a farm.
And @ original poster – stop guessing so much – it isn’t helping anyone!
I’d rather do that myself
Yes… I was completely serious about the pancake bit. It wasn’t in good fun at all. Thats why I put the
there. I was really trying to say that a couple years of pancake eating will kill you if you are over 100. Thank you for straightening me out.
The SoG
It seems a common thing in most supercentenarians is low insulin. I’m guessing if she ate potatoes and corn she couldn’t have had very low insulin.