Most people who reach 95 are handed a strict list of dos and don’ts by their doctors.Warren Buffett seems to have skipped that memo entirely. The man who built one of the most successful investment empires in history has spent decades eating the way most nutritionists would beg their patients not to and somehow, it hasn’t slowed him down one bit.Even after stepping away from the CEO’s chair at Berkshire Hathaway last year, handing the reins to Greg Abel, Buffett’s daily menu remains exactly what it’s always been: simple, sugary, and completely unbothered by conventional wisdom.
The Coke habit that just won’t quit
Ask anyone close to Buffett what fuels him, and Coca-Cola comes up before anything else. He’s long said that a full quarter of his daily calorie intake comes from the drink alone, working out to roughly five cans a day regular Coke through his working hours, Cherry Coke once he’s home for the evening.It’s not a passing fondness either. Berkshire Hathaway has held a massive stake in Coca-Cola for years, and Buffett has never hidden how personal that investment feels.In an interview with Fortune in 2015, He joked and said that the lowest death rate belongs to six-year-olds, so he simply decided to eat like one.
Breakfast decided by the stock market
Perhaps the most charming detail from Buffett’s routine is how he picks his breakfast.On his way to the office, he stops at McDonald’s, and what he orders depends on how the market is doing that morning.A good day might mean treating himself to a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit. A rougher one calls for something more modest, like two sausage patties, paid for in exact change his wife keeps ready in the car.It’s a small ritual, but it says a lot about a man who has always separated his relationship with money from his relationship with joy.
No gym, no regrets
Buffett has also never made peace with exercise, and he’s not shy about it. He and his late friend and business partner Charlie Munger reportedly kept exercise to a bare minimum for most of their lives, choosing instead, in Buffett’s words, to preserve themselves rather than push their bodies.He’s pointed to the physical toll on professional athletes as proof that too much strain can do more harm than good.Whether or not that logic holds up scientifically, it’s clearly worked out for him personally.
Happiness as the real longevity secret
Strip away the soda cans and the fast food wrappers, and Buffett’s real argument is simpler than it looks.He genuinely believes that contentment plays a bigger role in a long life than any diet chart could.In 2017, Buffet said CNBC that he’s happiest with a Coke in hand or a hot fudge sundae in front of him, and that this happiness, more than restraint, is what has carried him this far.He said, “I think happiness makes an enormous amount of difference…in terms of longevity. I’m happier when I’m eating hot fudge sundaes or drinking Coke.”At 95, with the best doctors in the world available to him and decades of data suggesting otherwise, Buffett continues to prove that sometimes living well simply means living the way that makes you happiest.