Moneyanatomy - personal finance blog

Wednesday, September 1, 2021

375 days of torture versus 325 days of joy?

If you would have a limited time to live, what would you pick? 375 days of torture or 325 days of joy? 

A rather interesting article appeared on my news feed a few days ago: "Small Changes in Diet Could Help You Live Healthier, More Sustainably". 

The first paragraph stated: "Eating a hot dog could cost you 36 minutes of healthy life, while choosing to eat a serving of nuts instead could help you gain 26 minutes of extra healthy life, according to a University of Michigan study." 

I decided to read it because I would be the one losing 36 minutes.

The second paragraph explained: "The study, published in the journal Nature Food, evaluated more than 5,800 foods, ranking them by their nutritional disease burden to humans and their impact on the environment. It found that substituting 10% of daily caloric intake from beef and processed meats for a mix of fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes and select seafood could reduce your dietary carbon footprint by one-third and allow people to gain 48 minutes of healthy minutes per day." 

I will not talk about the environmental part of this report. 

Much more interesting is the health part because it threatened to shave off a large number of years from my life. 

Below are select images used in the article. If you want to read the entire article, here is the link.



Source link: Nature



Source link: Nature


I eat mostly foods from the left side on the last image. Based on that and the suggestions on minutes gained or lost I would lose about 24-25h per week. I lose that much time because I almost always eat way more than one serving of what is mentioned. 
That is about 50 days per year and about 500 days (maybe 1.5 year each 10 years). Then by age 80 I will lose about 5 years of life. The authors are hedging and calling is "loss of healthy minutes", not just loss of life time.  

If I make a mental exercise and calculate how much "healthy life" will I gain if I eat foods only from the right side of the image, I would gain 5 h per week, or 10 days per year. However eating those foods will make my life a torture. 

I would curl on the floor with stomach pain. Those will not be "healthy minutes" for me. Most of the foods on the right side give me either stomach pain or some other kind of indigestion. 

This comparison makes it crystal clear to me that I need to use all my remaining time to eat what I really like and what doesn't cause me discomfort. I don't want to waist any of my time on what I don't like to eat. 

What would I prefer if there was only one year of life left but I could extend or shorten it by what I eat?
I could gain 10 days by torturing myself every day and have 375 days (of torture)? 
Or I could lose 50 days and only have 325 days left to live, but that would mean enjoying every meal, feeling great and strong every day and not have any pains?  

Now I really want my steak.

No comments:

Post a Comment