Bigger Effect on Longevity: Diet or Exercise?

Research rabbit hole story. This is a much harder question to answer than I thought.Which is more important to longevity: diet or exercise? That seems pretty straightforward. I was surprised to find how hard it was to get a clear comparison between two effects. The most direct comparison I could find (Atefatfar et al., 2023) found almost no effect of diet. Why? Are there better measures of diet on longevity?
Sources Cited and Further reading:
Atefatfar et al. “A Healthy Diet, Physical Activity, or Either in Relation to Cardiovascular and All-Cause Mortality: A Prospective Cohort Study.” Nutrition 116 (December 1, 2023): 112186.
doi.org/10.101...
Ahmad et al. “Mediterranean Diet Adherence and Risk of All-Cause Mortality in Women.” JAMA Network Open 7, no. 5 (May 31, 2024): e2414322.
doi.org/10.100...
Sebastian et al. “Long-Term Impact of Mediterranean Diet on Cardiovascular Disease Prevention: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.” Current Problems in Cardiology 49, no. 5 (May 2024): 102509.
doi.org/10.101...
Fadnes et al. “Life Expectancy Can Increase by up to 10 Years Following Sustained Shifts towards Healthier Diets in the United Kingdom.” Nature Food 4, no. 11 (November 2023): 961-65.
doi.org/10.103...
Caprara, Greta. “Diet and Longevity: The Effects of Traditional Eating Habits on Human Lifespan Extension.” Mediterranean Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism 11, no. 3 (September 15, 2018): 261-94.
doi.org/10.323...
Sheehan, Connor M., and Longfeng Li. “Associations of Exercise Types with All-Cause Mortality among U.S. Adults.” Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise 52, no. 12 (December 2020): 2554.
doi.org/10.124...

[@SilverFan21k]

Very interesting video

[@blu3_enjoy]

Interesting. I like how much leeway my body gives in what I can put into it. Thanks God

[@chucknology_]

I think a nuance is that high calorie foods are significantly easier to overeat. If you think about it, eating 3000cal of burgers is pretty easy, but trying to eat 3000cal of fruit is almost physically impossible.
But i think you are right, i spoke to a nutritionist and her advice was just the basics, eat what you like, make sure its diverse. Eat at a defecit if you want to lose weight and eat at a surplus if you want to gain.

[@PeterAllenLab]

Gary Taubes book "why we get fat" talks about a vicious cycle with sugar. We eat it, then have high blood sugar quickly, store it quickly, and get hungry quickly. I think (probably for some people more than others) sugar is a food that produces more hunger. So, yeah, some foods make it harder to lose weight, and obesity shortens lifespan. So there's a mechanism there... But it's strange/interesting that it doesn't really show up strongly in the statistics.

[@ncdave4life]

W/r/t the exercise-longevity linkage, a pitfall is determining the direction of causality. I.e., if sedentary people don't live as long as active people, is it because exercise improves longevity, or is it because healthy people are more active because they feel better?

[@JobvanderZwan]

Could the problem be that aging happens regardless of exercise and diet, and the main cause of death being age-related diseases? Because in that case exercise and diet have an effect on everything else, but if everything else is dwarfed by aging then it doesn't show up in the data. Even if bad diet/exercise habits may have an amplifying effect on aging that might still be less of a factor than other causes. Also, as an aside: if all we record is the point of death then that tells us very little about the quality of life of the person leading up to their death.

[@PeterAllenLab]

It’s a good point - extending “healthspan” is more important than lifespan in my opinion. Extending health tends to extend the life, but it might be that diet and exercise extend healthspan more than lifespan. For instance, the impact on heart attacks seems to be easier to measure. Probably a bigger effect. So while exercise and diet only buys maybe 8-ish years of life, they are probably healthier years with more autonomy, and that's a bigger selling point to me.

[@danp1224]

Unless your that guy on super size me.

[@PeterAllenLab]

Yeah, poor guy. He definitely found the logical limit of the effects of very bad diet. There's a great response documentary, though.
ruclips.net/video/evcNPfZlrZs/видео.htmlsi=9vbHnyqCvUBY_ICj
Guy eats fast food for a month but not so much of it ... and is fine.

[@atypocrat1779]

get a dog and walk it.

[@PeterAllenLab]

Good health advice, and mental health too.