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The diminishing returns of healthy eating
I do not understand why people who eat relatively very healthy only end up living 10-20% longer lives? In other words an unhealthy person can consume 500% more fat, sugar, salt than a healthy eater, yet only reduce his life span by 10-20%?
This tells me there is a point of diminishing returns to healthy eating which we never hear discussed in the media.
I am an engineer and know that there is an exponential relationship between 'wear and tear' and life. A car owner who takes 30% better care can expect double the life out of his car.
Maybe humans are so highly evolved that they easily adapt to unhealthy eating diets. So eating extra healthy just marginally improves life span.
A more evolutionary reason is that humans are designed to have built-in obscolence. In other words human lifespan has genetically evolved to produce a finite life so that new populations can grow faster. Once a human has passed their reproductive age they become more of a liability rather than an assestt to their community. At least that was true in the ancient hunter-gatherer days. Genes that allowed for a shorter life span benefited the gene pool by allowing for a greater diversity of humans to multiply faster. For this reason, diet and life-style changes only have incremental improvements on our life-span.
The problem is, all cars off an assembly line are identical. Humans are all very different. It's called biological variation. It's all in the genes. And of course, cars can't repair themselves when they wear. Humans can.
The key is quality of life. My father in law suffers from a lifetime of eating crap. He is overweight, has problems with mobility, sleeping, chronic pain, depression, etc. He will probably fall within your 10-20% shorter lifespan. I would not want to experience his quality of life in his last 10 years.
I may only outlive him by 10-20% but I am certain that I will not suffer physically and mentally as he has and will.