Luigi Cornaro - How to live to 100 and knowing it since the 16th century!

Today we learned from Dr. Goldberg about Luigi Cornaro. Its pretty amazing to have known about this from the 16th century, why do we still have diseases and premature deaths. This is from the book "In Search of the Ultimate Diet - Volume I" by Stanley Bass.

LUIGI CORNARO LIVED 102 YEARS

(Luigi wrote a book The Art of Living Long" by Luigi Cornaro, published in 1558 in Padua, Italy.)
If you follow a minimal diet you can achieve super nutrition. Let's look at Luigi Cornaro, a man who at age 35 was weak, sick, and dying.
At the time, he consulted the medical heads of Genoa, Italy. He asked the doctors, "What can I do?" Finally, one smart doctor said, "Look, Luigi," (Luigi was a nobleman) "cut down on your riotous living, stop the drinking, cut out the rich food, eat as little as you can, and don't abuse your body. You can get well."

So Luigi started to live what he called the "temperate life," "La Vita Sobra", the name of the book which he wrote later, The Sober Life. He reduced his food, cutting down to twelve ounces a day of solid foods divided into two meals and pure grape juice, fourteen ounces, also divided into two servings.

Immediately Luigi began to feel better, and at the end of the year he was in perfect health, completely free of all problems, just on this small amount of food. He lived on this minimal diet from age 35 until 85.

Then his relatives ganged up on him. They said, "Luigi, you're an old man, you have to keep up your strength. You have to start eating more. Luigi, you gotta eat more!" They annoyed him so much with their advice that just to shut them up he agreed to increase his food. He increased it from twelve to fourteen ounces - that's only four tablespoons of food more. Immediately Luigi became violently ill; within three days he had a high fever. Within seven days he was near death.

So he said, "I'm through with this. I'm going to go back to my old diet." Within a few days he became well again, and he lived in a state of unbroken health and happiness until the age of 102. When he died, he died in an ideal way. He was in his rocking chair. He closed his eyes, took a nap, and didn't wake up. There was no pain or suffering, ever. His mind was clear as a bell until the very end, no senility, no memory loss. Indeed, one of the things he wrote about in his discourses was that his hearing and vision were perfect He retained all his senses. That's something you don't see today.

Okay, this is the value of a minimal diet. Now, Cornaro did not eat the quality of food that we recommend. They didn't know about the importance of fresh food in those days, the late 1400's, early 1500's. Luigi ate a little meat; he ate an egg yolk; he had panado, which was a vegetable soup with a little tomato; he had grape juice; and he had bread. He used to dip the bread in the soup. That was his diet. That's all he ate. He didn't want to eat fish because it didn't agree with him, and he didn't eat chicken. He ate a little meat. On that diet, which we natural nutritionists would call low quality, he lived to 102.
I've always wondered what would have happened had he lived on our quality of food. He might have gone on to 150.


How incredible is this? Portion size truly matters! Here is more about Luigi Carnaro if you are interested!

http://drbass.com/cornaro.html