Susannah Mushatt Jones ate four strips of bacon every morning. Not occasionally. Every morning. Then she’d have scrambled eggs and grits.
She lived to 116.
Naturally, people wanted to know her secret. TIME actually asked her shortly before her 115th birthday.
“I don’t have a secret,” she told them.
Apparently nobody was satisfied with that answer because we are still talking about the bacon.
I love these stories.
Emma Morano lived to 117 and ate raw eggs for something like 90 years. A doctor had recommended them when she was a teenager because she was anemic, and she just kept going.
Another woman who made it to 117, Maria Branyas, ate about three yogurts a day.
Misao Okawa loved mackerel sushi.
Violet Brown ate fish and mutton.
And somewhere right now somebody is probably putting together a longevity diet consisting of raw eggs, bacon, yogurt, sushi and mutton.
Good luck with that.
We do this every time somebody lives an extraordinarily long life.
What’s your secret?
We seem convinced there must be one.
Bacon.
Beans.
Olive oil.
Never getting married.
Getting married.
Going to church.
Having a drink every day.
Never touching alcohol.
Walking.
Sleeping.
Yogurt.
The problem is that somebody who lives to 115 isn’t exactly an average human being who happened to choose the correct breakfast. They’re an extraordinary biological outlier.
Researchers actually study people who live that long because there appears to be a substantial genetic component to extreme longevity. That doesn’t mean what they did during those 115 years didn’t matter. Of course it matter do.
It means we probably shouldn’t look at one thing they ate and turn it into instructions.
Susannah Jones never smoked or drank and reportedly slept about ten hours a night. She also ate four strips of bacon every morning.
Which one got her to 116?
I have no idea.
Neither did she.
In fact, when TIME reminded her that she was about to turn 115, she didn’t offer some profound reflection on longevity.
She said:
“I’ll be 115? I ain’t gonna be 115. Nope.”
Maybe that’s the best longevity advice I’ve heard yet.
Not because it’ll help you live longer.
Because at least she wasn’t trying to sell us anything.
My parents were geneticists.
They kept tortoises.
I’ll let you know how my life turns out if you should live that long.
That’s humor btw.