The Secret to a Long Life? Embrace Short Ones

Quick Overview:

This blog is about the choices we make especially with respect to the food. What if the packaged juice, the energy drink, your bag of crackers that you considered good food, because they resist spoilage is an indication of their intrinsic biological utility, their value and their toxicity....

Mummified Foods!

The Counterintuitive Paradoxical Reality:

There's a counterintuitive truth at the heart of health and resilience: to live a long life, you must be ready to accept short ones. Not your own, but the short, natural lifespans of nearly everything that constitutes your existence.

This wisdom begins within your own body. Consider your most vital hormones, like cortisol. Its crucial job is to help you wake up alert and ready for the day, yet its biological half-life is only about 60-90 minutes. Why is something so essential designed to fade so quickly?

The answer is precision. A short lifespan allows for rapid turnover and tight regulation. Cortisol peaks sharply to rouse you, then diminishes so your body can transition to rest and repair. This pattern holds for many of our body’s key molecules—hormones, neurotransmitters,antioxidants, enzymes, signalling molecules and so on. They are created for a specific task, after which they are efficiently cleared. Artificially prolonging their activity, much like holding down a switch meant for a momentary press, can lead to dysfunction, resistance, and illness. For example, even when a life sustaining hormone like insulin is forced to linger longer by manipulating its natural levels, it can fuel inflammation, weight gain, and disease, ultimately shortening 'your' life. The body’s intelligence is in its rhythm and brevity.

Beyond Biochemistry into Life:

This principle extends beyond biochemistry into the very texture of our lives. True resilience isn’t built during constant comfort but in the adaptive cycles between challenge and recovery. A short-lived fever trains your immune system. Periods of manageable stress, followed by rest, strengthen your capacity. The modern pursuit of constant pleasure—through endless scrolling or processed foods—is an attempt to unnaturally prolong a fleeting dopamine signal. In doing so, we disrupt our natural cycles and diminish our capacity for genuine, enduring vitality.

This brings us to perhaps the most profound and tangible application of this principle: our food. To understand why, we must first ask: what is food, truly?

Food releases 'light' that powers Life:

Sounds poetic eh? Energy can be perceived differently by us based on the sense organ being used to perceive it, but it is just a formless, tagless dynamically flowing and morphing field that is a part of everything in this universe. Matter is energy and energy is the fabric of matter- so regardless of what I call energy- it really doesn't matter :)

Back to food as a package containing light.

Plants, the autotrophs, perform the fundamental alchemy: they capture light energy by weaving a molecular fabric—'carbohydrates'—out of carbon dioxide and water. In weaving this building block of life, they lock the solar energy within chemical bonds, investing it as the force that holds these elements together to form various molecules, ranging from simple glucose to the most complex carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. Form, flavor, and molecular structure notwithstanding, these are all packets of stored solar energy.

When we, the heterotrophs, consume plants (or animals that eat plants), we break these molecules down, releasing that original sunlight that is the energy to power our bodies. In this way, the ancient saying that we are "beings of light" is biochemically literal. We are part of a grand synergy: plants package energy in molecular boxes; we break and release it. This cycle is life itself.

What is Good Food:

Your body is not a single entity but a vast collective—trillions of human cells in partnership with a complex ecosystem of gut bacteria, your microbiome. This community is essential for your health, influencing everything from digestion to immunity to mood.

"Good food" is food that nourishes this entire collective. Whole foods like fruits, vegetables, and grains contain a wide array of nutrients, fibers, and phytonutrients that serve a "broad audience" within you. Your human cells and your microbial partners all recognize and can utilize these components.

Why Perishability is a Seal of Quality:

Here is the beautiful, inevitable consequence: high biological demand leads to a short shelf life. The more universally nourishing a food is, the more readily it will be consumed—by you, or if left uneaten, by the microorganisms in your environment. Fresh juice ferments. Fruit ripens and then spoils. This perishability is not a flaw; it is the stamp of high value. It is nature’s seal of approval. We instinctively offer fresh juice or broth to someone who is ill because these are the quickly assimilated, life-supporting fuels that every part of our being craves.

Now, observe the modern inversion. We prize food that resists nature. We process it, add synthetic preservatives, and engineer it to sit on shelves for months. Our flawed logic is: "If bacteria won't eat it, it’s all mine to keep."

But we must ask: if the resilient, ancient organisms of bacteria and fungi—which can digest complex fibers and thrive in diverse environments—reject a substance as a food source, what is it telling us? We are tricking our taste buds with isolated fats, sugars, and salts, while the "food," inert on the shelf, provides little authentic nourishment. It can starve our microbiome, promote inflammation, and sow the seeds of metabolic disease.

The correlation becomes clear:A long shelf life for processed food often equals a diminished quality of life for you.

A Practical Path Forward: Honoring Natural Cycles

This doesn't mean we must abandon all modern convenience. The goal is mindful alignment, not perfect purity. Here is how to apply this principle:

1. Seek the Perishable: Let perishability guide your choices. The whole loaf of home made bread that molds in a few days is a better choice than the ultra-processed one that lasts for weeks. The mold is a sign that the bread was, itself, a viable food source.

   
   

2. Decode Preservation: Understand how food is preserved. Benign methods like freezing, fermenting, vacuum-packing, or using natural acids (like vinegar or lemon juice) are aligned with this principle. Be more cautious of foods with long lists of synthetic preservatives intended to completely inhibit all microbial life. Choose foods that are wisely preserved, that once opened don't last very long (as the foods are still considered valuable by other life forms).

   
   

3. Be Vocal about Grow Local: Encourage locally grown foods. This would minimize energy wastage on transporting, packaging as well as the use of unnecessary chemical interventions. Besides nurturing your body, it would decrease carbon footprint, sustain nature, help create employment, provide livelihood, create opportunities and feed the economy too.

   
   

4. Feed Your Collective: Prioritize foods known to nourish your microbiome—fibrous vegetables, legumes, fermented foods like yogurt and kimchi. When you eat, remember you are feeding a vital internal community.

   
   

5. Accept the Cycle: Reframe spoilage not as waste, but as feedback. It confirms you bought real, nutrient-dense food. Plan meals around fresh ingredients first, using frozen or well-preserved staples as backups.

   
   

Ultimately, a long and vibrant life is not gathered by hoarding the static and inert, but by gracefully participating in the dynamic, transient cycles of nature. It is built by choosing the fleeting, nutrient-rich apple over the everlasting, plastic-wrapped snack cake.

Choose the loaf that molds in five days. It carries nature's five-star review.