I doubt it. In my experience the elderly tend to have weird diets, especially towards the end. I'm guessing it's due to a bunch of factors: trouble chewing/swallowing means eating is more of an ordeal, reduced need for calories because of reduced physical activity, and reduced sense of taste and smell makes eating unrewarding. My great grandmother spent her last year or two subsisting almost entirely on Kit Kat bars. We used to joke she could have appeared in a commercial for them, implying the Kit Kat bars were the reason for her longevity (she was 98).

She ate this way for 90 years so it sounds like her motivation wasn't lack of teeth or being old. I'd suggest reading the article before making conclusions.

The article doesn't say this at all. It says that she used to eat more eggs - 3 raw, plus an omelette at lunch and chicken at dinner. She had cut down to 2 raw eggs a day and had added in some biscuits.

The poster could easily be correct.

It seems you are also having trouble reading the article so let me paste a quote directly from the article to help you:

"But it was also down to a rather unusual diet of three eggs - two raw - each day for more than 90 years."

I'm not sure how else to interpret this statement.

You should read further. It goes on to say the rest:

It was a regime she took up as a young woman, after the doctor diagnosed her with anaemia shortly after World War One. She had cut down to just two eggs a day, and a few biscuits recently. Her doctor of 27 years, Carlo Bava, had told AFP news agency that she rarely ate vegetables or fruit. "When I met her, she ate three eggs per day, two raw in the morning and then an omelette at noon, and chicken at dinner."

I did misquote the number of eggs, but not the fact that she had cut down on the amount she was eating.

But that doesn't mean she ate only eggs, just that she ate a lot of eggs.

Ask a lottery winner how you can get rich and they'll tell you to buy lottery tickets.

Still, if it's a process as poorly understood as dying of old age, saying "made me wonder if any of her longevity can be credited to having a severely calorie restricted diet" seems like a reasonable response.

I actually wondered if it had to do with eating an odd number of foods (3 eggs). Seems like it worked for her!

Some research on worms, mice, and monkeys has pointed at caloric restriction and/or a carb-free diets helping with longevity. If I recall correctly, these two strategies help with insulin sensitivity and other hormones that are known to serve as regulators in certain DNA repair pathways.

I think posters above are not supposing that caloric restriction could have helped at random. Rather, they have read about it helping with longevity -- unlike odd numbers of food.

Thanks for your comment.

The article says she typically also ate an omelette for lunch and chicken for dinner. The biscuits and eggs were just her breakfast.

It doesn't say that, also, the article mentions she "cut down" to that, and used to eat more.

I'm more interested in when various athletic old people are going to die. Ernestine Shepherd, or Charles Eugster, or any of these ancient japanese bodybuilders.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5om6gbDwA8

I believe thats in her late stages I guess.

Don't forget, old people have issues with chewing etc.

I'd say good olive oil is the answer! And no fast food?

We'll see, personally I think its a big mystery... life that is.

That Japanese guy attributed it to rice whiskey and cigars.

I don't think so because many of her family members surpassed the 90s. We need to check if everyone shared the same diet or it is more about her DNA.

yeah many of the elders had weird diets. There was always eggs involved also.

Calorie restriction is really interesting

Do you have evidence about your egg claim? As someone very interested in diets I'd be curious...

The most critical element for survival with any diet - particularly with low calorie intake - is protein. Eggs just happen to be the easiest form factor. Personally when I'm on a weight loss regimen, I take in more canned Wild Pacific Salmon than eggs. Salmon, containing less mercury than many other fish, is a fairly safe bet for frequent consumption.

I'm curious how someone with a constant diet of something like eggs and biscuits for 5+ years fares regarding severe deficiencies in truly necessary vitamins and minerals. I do think the body is a miraculous machine that will successfully adapt to many diets that experts would otherwise claim as being dangerously deficient.

Not evidence, but it makes sense if you think about it. Eggs are nutritious, easy to eat (especially for people whose teeth have fallen off) and quite filling.

Lots of things that make sense if you think about it are not real, be careful there

I feel that beans are more filling than eggs.

Making any assumptions on a sample of size 1 for something as multicausal as human longevity is ridiculous