A short YouTube monologue (by Joy Kong, MD) recounts a childhood habit of observing very healthy older people and contrasts them with younger people who appeared unhealthy. The speaker attributes those differences to diet—older people eating more fruits, vegetables, and home-cooked (unprocessed) foods—while noting she only later recognized the specific role of processed foods.
How did you discover the relationship between what you ate and your health? I was a really observant kid. Even at a young age, I would see really, really old people. No matter how old they were, it could be like in their late 80s, and they'd still be very vibrant, just super energetic and just on the go and just doing stuff all the time. And then I would see people half their age that were broken down, beat up, just looked like crap, and they would feel like crap, and they'd have aches and pains. I thought, what is it these old people are doing that are so vibrant? Because I want to do that. So as a kid, all I could do was look at what they were doing. I couldn't tell what they were not doing. For example, I saw they were eating a lot of fruit and vegetables, eating healthy stuff. They weren't eating the fast foods or the junk stuff. But I didn't realize that they weren't eating processed foods. Typically, they were eating stuff that they were making themselves. I didn't figure that out until much later in my life, unfortunately.
