The Longevity Lever Most People Are Missing
Read time: 4 minutes
I missed you last week, and I hope the feeling was mutual 🤞
I was planning to write my newsletter last Monday, but I had the most disgusting headache for 2 days!
It didn't seem fair that it was the bank holiday weekend and I ended up with a headache, but none of the fun that usually goes along with it 😂
Anyway, since I last spoke to you, a few things have happened:
I've decided to grow a beard for the second time in my life. The only other time was during lockdown, and the less said about that, the better!
I've moved up the Albanian coast for the next 4 weeks to a spot called Vlore. So far, it seems nice. Will report my findings in due course.
Lastly, the elevator mirror in my new Airbnb is heavenly. The downlighting goes really well with 9L of water.
Right, enough of this idiot in the mirror, I've got an awesome read for you today, especially if you're a lover of olive oil 👀
I saw a post on Instagram from Menno Henselman last week on the review I'm about to share with you, and, well, I just had to share it with you...
Here's something strange for you.
The longest-living populations on Earth don't share a diet.
The Okinawans eat high-carb.
The Sardinians drink red wine with lunch.
The Ikarians in Greece pour olive oil on everything.
The Adventists in Loma Linda are mostly plant-based.
The Nicoyans in Costa Rica live on beans and tropical fruit.
Five regions. Five different cuisines. Five wildly different macro splits.
And yet they all produce some of the highest concentrations of centenarians, people who live to 100, on the planet.
A 2025 review in Ageing Research Reviews set out to answer a question:
if it's not the diet itself, what's the common thread?
While the answer wasn't a complete shock, it did surprise me a little.
The authors, led by researchers from the University of Molise in Italy and Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, wanted to answer a deceptively simple question.
These populations don’t eat the same way.
So what do they actually have in common?
The answer was not a macro split. Nor was it wasn’t calorie counting. It wasn’t any specific diet philosophy.
Do you know what it was?
It was polyphenols.
You might be sitting there thinking, Mark, what the hell are polyphenols?
Polyphenols are plant compounds with anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. They’re found in olive oil, red wine, coffee, tea, berries, beans, sweet potatoes, soy, herbs, and turmeric, to name a few.
They’re not a single thing. They’re a whole family of bioactive compounds that appear to influence the body at the cellular level.
Protecting DNA, reducing inflammation, supporting mitochondrial function, and helping cells clean out their own damage over time.
That's some next-level sh*t 👏
This review mapped specific polyphenols onto the twelve biological hallmarks of ageing.
I'm not going to share them because they're above my pay grade, but feel free to Google them if you're interested. No doubt you'll have the same blank expression on your face when you read them 😂
The findings were striking:
- Oleuropein (extra virgin olive oil) reduces the amyloid plaques associated with Alzheimer’s
- Anthocyanins (purple sweet potatoes, berries, beans) protect DNA from damage
- Chlorogenic acid (coffee) prevents the gene methylation patterns linked to cancer
- Curcumin (turmeric) reduces oxidative stress and clears damaged mitochondria
- Genistein (soy) activates tumour-suppressing genes
Has anyone tried these purple potatoes?
It won't come as a shock to find out that this proud Irishman loves his potatoes, even those of the purple variety.
I know, how exotic of me.
Right back to the serious stuff.
Now these effects from the polyphenols weren't isolated.
Rather, think of them as a coordinated assault on the mechanisms that drive ageing itself, and this is where things get interesting.
In nutrition culture, we obsess over macros.
Protein, carbs, fats.
Calories in, calories out.
Now these things matter a lot!
Without enough protein, you can’t maintain muscle.
Without managing your overall calorie intake, you'll become a chubosaurus.
Macros are the foundation. That bit's non-negotiable.
But this review forces a bigger question:
Once this foundation is in place, what actually drives long-term health and longevity?
Because it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that cals and macros are important, but getting them from shitty food sources isn't exactly healthy.
The answer doesn’t appear to be tweaking your carb ratio. Obviously great news for those of us who live for bread, pasta, and pizza 🤤
Rather, it’s the quality of what you’re eating.
Specifically, how densely your food is packed with these bioactive plant compounds.
You can hit your macros perfectly on a diet of processed protein bars, white rice, and chicken breast.
The numbers will look great in MyFitnessPal, but you’ll be missing the entire second layer, the compounds that influence how your cells age over decades.
This is the gap most people don’t see.
I love that olive oil and coffee are on this list.
I’ll be honest. As someone who drinks coffee daily and uses extra virgin olive oil on almost everything, this research is the kind I read with a smile.
Coffee shows up in the Blue Zone diets of Ikaria, Sardinia, Nicoya, and Loma Linda.
The chlorogenic acid content alone makes it one of the most polyphenol-dense things most people consume regularly.
Fun fact, the happiest countries in the world, such as Finland and Norway, also consume the most coffee in the world.
Coincidence, I think not!
Extra virgin olive oil is the cornerstone of the Ikarian Mediterranean diet. The oleuropein concentrations in good Greek and Italian oils range from 380 to 939 mg per kilogram, substantial amounts of one of the most-studied anti-ageing compounds in the literature.
I would say this is part of why Italy keeps pulling at me, but in reality, it's the great weather, amazing food, awesome culture, stunning scenery, and the beautiful people, but the polyphenols do help 😂
The food in Italy sits inside a way of life.
Slower pace, stronger social ties, more walking, and more sun consistently produce some of the longest-lived people in the world.
Diet doesn’t exist in a vacuum, but the diet does seem to matter, and it’s not because Sardinians are counting their grams of saturated fat.
Before I leave you, there are a few caveats to take note of, because this review isn’t proof of anything:
It’s observational. No randomised trial has proven that polyphenols cause longevity.
The association is consistent, but causation is harder to establish.
Polyphenol bioavailability varies wildly between people.
Your gut bacteria, your metabolism, and even how the food is prepared all influence how much your body actually absorbs.
And critically, you can’t supplement your way to a Blue Zone diet.
There’s no polyphenol pill that replicates this.
But if you want a billion-pound business idea, there ya go 💰
Remember, this isn’t a prescription.
I’m not going to hand you a list of ten foods to eat starting tomorrow.
I want you to think of this as a perspective shift.
If you’ve been treating nutrition as a numbers game, macros, calories, ratios, this is your nudge to zoom out.
Those numbers matter... but they’re the floor, not the ceiling.
The ceiling is quality.
It’s the colour on your plate.
It’s the olive oil instead of seed oil.
It’s coffee instead of soda.
It’s berries instead of bagels.
It’s the slow accumulation of the right compounds that, over decades, appear to influence how well you age.
So get your macros right, but then start thinking about what’s actually in your food.
That’s where the long game is won.
And I want to see you bloody win!
Right, have a great week.
Catch you soon.
Mark
