It's the Food, Dude! Living the Blue Zone Life at Age 85. Meet My Role Model--The Plant-Based Poet. It's Never Too Late to Change!

 

Margaret Bennet-Alder

 

"Although heart disease, diabetes, cancer and obesity have felled relatives, I'm well at [85], thanks to my plate of plants.  I look forward to more years of the same."

--Bennet-Alder's comment on the New York Times, "The Fat Trap,"  by Tara Parker Pope--

 

 

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You don't have to live on the Greek island of Ikaria to live a Happy Healthy Long Life.   If you missed this favorite article of mine, "The Island Where People Forget to Die", you can enjoy it now.

Take heart!  Margaret Bennet-Alder is doing it, and she was even a bit a late-bloomer.

When I grow up, I want to be just like her.

This energetic dynamo is 85 years old, publishes the "Gardener's Journal", maintains the Toronto Garden Book website, has an iPad, follows me on FaceBook, exercises daily, has been plant-based for over three years, & her latest accomplishment is poetry!  Stay tuned--you'll find her brilliant whimsical "Veggie Verses" below.

We first met about a year and half ago, and I've been an admirer of hers ever since.

Margaret is truly living the Blue Zone life--even though she's miles away from Ikaria, Sardinia, Loma Linda, or Okinawa.  It's something we can all do--no matter where we call home!

Margaret's checked off all the Blue Zone boxes--and so can you.

• She's an avid gardener
• She's a strong woman
• She's got strong family relationships
• She's active in her community
• She execises, walks, and leads a busy life doing work she's passionate about
• She eats plant-based--including plenty of legumes
• She doesn't smoke
• Sun---well, not so much!
• She's a hip lady--who keeps up with times!

 

 

It's the Food Dude

 

Over a month ago, Margaret sent me a "keeper" kind of email, along with a clever "Ode to Plant-Based Living", she called "The Veggie Verses".  She wrote it for the benefit of her friends, to condense everything she had learned that was enabling her to stay happy, healthy, and to lead a long active life without disabilities.  

As Margaret once told me:  "I realized that in their mid-to-late eighties many of the elderly go into nursing homes.  I'm trying very hard to stave that off."

 

Me:  "Your email, & Veggie Verses are just a delight--and of course I'm immensely flattered to have made the cut--and to get a very nice mention.   Don't know how you did it--but you didn't miss a beat--& covered it all.  Love your mantra, "It's the food, dude!"  Especially, coming from you.

Please, please, please may I share it via the HHLL blog?  It's too good to hide under a hat.  But, I totally understand if you don't want to share it."

Margaret:  "Thank you, Debby, and of course you may use it however you want to."

 

 

Margaret's Back Story

 

I hope you find this as inspiring as I do. 

 

"You are one who continues to inspire me to follow a whole foods plant-based diet. Tonight my son and I are going to have pizza based on your recent recipe. Primarily because of you, I joined Facebook. Thank you, thank you.

In attempting to share with my friends and relatives the information I've found, I have composed the following doggerel, Veggie Verses. Several resources are briefly mentioned including the Healthy Librarian, which may be of interest to you. Even a crumb-sized comment will be welcome.

But first a bit of my nutrition history. 

I’ve been eating plants for the past three years. At age 85 I’m in good health, and my weight has come down to what it was in my teens.

This all began after my brother urged me, albeit gently, for 18 months to read The China Study, but what does a brother know? I found out.

Finally three years ago this past June when I was about to turn 82, he said, “Have you got the book yet?” I told him I was waiting for a copy on reserve at the library.

He said, “You want your own copy.” As we spoke on the phone, a Tuesday, I ordered it from Amazon, and it came on Thursday. I dipped into it and by Saturday I was eating vegan.

What convinced me was that generally speaking excess calories from animal foods turn into fat whereas excess calories from plants are burned up in activity or heat.

My brother also recommended books by John McDougall, MD. Following The McDougall Program I began this new way of eating by using the recipes and menus for his 12-day diet. Within a month I lost the 10 pounds I’d been trying to lose for 35 years.

As I studied further and cut out all added oil, I lost another 15. My BMI in total went from 26 to 19: my clothes from size 14 to 8 or 10.

Friends tell me how great I look, and I feel good. My knees used to hurt on the stairs, but no longer.

Diet trumps exercise and when people comment on my good health, I say, “It’s the food, Dude.”

My background in nutrition helped me to accept what I was reading. I graduated with a BA in home economics from the University of Western Ontario in 1949, and then taught high school students home ec which included much nutrition advice I would never teach today.

Other factors motivating me in this whole foods plant-based way of eating is the ill health in my and my parents’ generation.

My  parents, neither of whom smoked, each died of a heart attack. Aunts suffered from obesity, cancer and diabetes. My brother almost died of a heart attack 12 years ago. He and his wife were in a Honolulu hotel waiting to go on a cruise the next day. He woke up in the morning with an elephant on his chest and by 11 am had a stent in one of the arteries to his heart.

He also studied nutrition at the Ontario Agriculture College-University of Guelph.  In The China Study,  by T. Colin Campbell, PhD, my brother found the information he was looking for to avoid another heart attack and stent. We both also read How to Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, by Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr., MD.

And so I continued to read and study, and wanting to share with more than "It's the food, Dude," especially to neighbours and friends to whom in conversation I can't get across all the information that I would like to, I give them the Veggie Verses with the preamble."

 

What Margaret didn't mention in this email is that she also walks 45 minutes a day, six days a week.   

She lifts weights six days out of seven--with an increasing number of repetitions.

She also balances on a BOSU every morning for two minutes as her oatmeal cooks in the microwave.

She's read Dr. Norman Doige's book, The Brain That Changes Itself, where she learned about Michael Merzenich's Posit Science Brain Training, and completed the "auditory training".  Judging by everything this woman is accomplishing at age 85--I think she's on to something!

This is fascinating stuff and I've written about it here.  Don't miss it!  Read about Dr. Merzenich's ground-breaking work in the New York Times, here and here.

 

 

The Veggie Verses - An Ode to Living the Plant-Based Life

 

 

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better. It’s not!
—Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax


You’ll find attached
what my brain has hatched.

 
It’s my device
for giving advice,
free and unasked for,
which may close the door
on our seeing each other,
which is not what I’d rather.

Make no mistake,
no need to partake.
But being a taker
perhaps may delay
the sight of your maker.
And if in the end,
my way to wend
is not your intend,
I’ll still be your friend.


Veggie Verses

Many a diet I’ve tried,
to have less fat and more pride,
but all to no avail,
save for this holy grail.

At age 85, I should be dead,
like too many cousins and friends.
Instead, I’m alive and don’t ail,
thanks to this holy grail.

It’s the food, Dude!

Just eat the food:
    beans, greens,
    oats, groats,
    roots and fruits,
    potatoes, tomatoes,
    berries and curries,
    onions and melons,
    beets and wheat.

Eat no meat, athlete,
nor milk and its ilk,
especially cheese,
to prevent disease.

For the uninitiated,
avoid the fractionated.
To achieve your goal,
eat it whole.

T. Colin Campbell,
of U. of Cornell,
is retired as a doc of nutrition.
He’s written, for our erudition,
about his life’s work in a book.
So have a good look
at The China Study:
the plants are your buddy.

To improve your health,
thus add to your wealth,
Google McDougall, Dr. John.
Free lectures, free letters—right on!
As are his programs live-in and live-out.
He talks straight; does not mess about.
His “The Perils of Dairy”
on YouTube is awfully scary.
Many books he has written.
His newest on starch-strong nutrition,
is The Starch Solution.
It’s a true revolution
based on human evolution.
To all and sundry,
you’ll never go hungry.
His programs residential
are highly influential.
You’ll be curtailed,
but not food-failed.
Have all you can eat,
not forgetting a sweet.

The Esselstyn clan,
Doctor Caldwell and Ann,
have written a clicker
to heal your ticker,
and how “healthy” oil
just increases hearts’ toil.
Bill Clinton went seekin’
his advice on the vegan.
Rip, their son, also is hip.
His Engine 2 Diet for 28 days
will you amaze. His week-ends away,
Farms2Forks, in the U.S. of A.,
do so much much more
than make only hay.

A man of nutrition and a dietitian,
Jeff Novick’s quick tricks
with meals made simple
will show your dimple
‘cause his style
makes you smile.
He’ll save you time
as well as your dime.
He’s also a joker,
and not mediocre.

The dot-com vegsource
is a tour de force,
with many a link
to help us shrink.
There’s so much knowledge,
it could fill a college.
They’ve DVDs and CDs galore.
If it’s names you’ld like to look for,
here are a few to pursue:
Barnard and Lisle,
Pulde and Lederman,
Chef AJ and Heidrich,
Robbins, both Ocean and John.
Dapper Doc Klaper,
and for your soul,
the amazing Rich Roll.

The medical Healthy Librarian,
a plant-based true vegetarian,
informs with voluminous vigor
the evidence-based and de rigeur
on Facebook, email, and blog.
Her web site, so topical, you’ll be agog.
And her recipes, too, are nutritious
and super delicious.

From peer-reviewed journals,
good Doctor Mike Greger
makes videos short and of rigor
which he posts every day
on NutritionFacts dot org.
He’ll delay your trip to the morgue.

Powered-up athletes
who’ve given up meats
ascribe their condition
to starch-based nutrition.
And older men, too,
don’t feel so blue.
No more Viagra,
they feel like Niagara.

A name with a hook
is Forks Over Knives,
a movie, a site and a book,
all made to better our lives.

It’s worth repeating,
that this way of eating
is catching on
from city to farm.
So let’s whoop it up
for a healthy head’s up.

Choose this way to dine
and do go online,
where our brains are imploding
with the info exploding.

May my little review
make all easy to do.
Thus you’ll not fail
with this holy grail. 

 

 

 Margaret's My Role Model

I Hope She's an Inspiration to You, Too!

In Spite of Genes, Our Family History--or Even Our Age--It's Never Too Late to Change!

 

Thank you, Margaret, for your willingness to share your story & your Veggie Verses with all of us.

Why Not Give Margaret a Thumbs Up on FB or in the comments, right here?

 

Comments

[Bonnie]

Wahoo!! I love, love, love this! Thank you.

[Fritzy Dean]

I am a recently converted vegan, after being a life long "semi-vegetarian". I am nearly Margaret's age .I am 77 and have more energy than I did when I was 50. So grateful to have found the courage to go to plant based eating. I intend to be a vigorous, feisty old lady for many more years.

[Carol]

What an encouraging post - that name, Margaret Bennet-Alder, was niggling at my brain, but I couldn't remember why it was so familiar. When I googled, I found a reference to the fact that she was the national La Leche League Coordinator in Canada in the 70s, when I was nursing my first babies, and an active LLL member. So this woman is no stranger to pioneering! Nice to see she's still at it!

[Healthy Librarian]

@Carol: Thanks for sharing that factoid! She was definitely a pioneer--very few of her contemporaries were breast-feeding. National Coordintor--amazing. Had it not been for La Leche's help I would have stopped nursing at 3 months from a breast infection (mastitis)--which is what my doctor had advised. Following their advised it went away--never t return again.

@Fritzy: Congrats to you!! Thanks for sharing--and may you go from strength to strength!

@Bonnie: Me, too!

[Chris]

I'd love to know Margaret's exercise history! Was she a late bloomer with that as well?

What a great role model!!!

[Meredith]

That's incredibly inspiring! Thanks to both of you for sharing.

[Joan]

Wonderful post. So enjoyed reading it. I always wish I had started Dr. E's diet sooner and this made me feel better. What a courageous, delightful and wonderful lady!

[Willow]

You're my hero, Margaret!

[The Healthy Librarian]

@Chris: I'll have to ask Margaret specifically---but, in her words, "Exercise has never been my strong point, but I'm hoping the walking will make it so."

[Pauline]

Love this. Veggie Verses is great - made me smile. I'm a late starter, too. I'm 67, just been plant based about 6 weeks and this also made me feel better about just now beginning. You are a hero, Margaret!