Most people chasing 100 count their steps, cut sugar, and treat broccoli like a personality trait. One of the richest men on the planet looked at all that and asked for another Cherry Coke.
Berkshire Hathaway chairman emeritus Warren Buffett is 96, still sharp and still eating like a first grader. He has a simple theory for why it works, and it has nothing to do with green vegetables.
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Happiness is the secret ingredient
“I think happiness makes an enormous amount of difference…in terms of longevity,” Buffett told CNBC in Tokyo in 2023. “I’m happier when I’m eating hot fudge sundaes or drinking Coke.”
He was 92 then, and he said he’d gladly trade time for taste.
“I know all these people eat all these green things and everything,” he said. “But if somebody told me I would live an extra year if I ate nothing but broccoli and a few other things all my life instead of eating what I like to eat, I would say take the year off the end of my life and…let me eat what I like to eat.”
His menu hasn’t changed much since grade school.
“I always tell people: I found everything I like to eat by the time I was six,” he said.
Warren Buffett famously said he’d give up a year of his life if it meant he could eat whatever he wanted.Bloomberg / Getty Images
One quarter Coca-Cola, by his own math
Buffett calls himself “one quarter Coca-Cola,” and he means it literally.
“If I eat 2,700 calories a day, a quarter of that is Coca-Cola,” he told Fortune in 2015. “I drink at least five 12-ounce servings. I do it every day.”
He has regular Coke at the office and Cherry Coke at home. He also has a ready answer for anyone who questions the sugar.
“I checked the actuarial tables, and the lowest death rate is among six-year-olds,” he said. “So I decided to eat like a six-year-old.”
The habit pays off, too. Berkshire started buying Coke stock in 1988, and the soda giant now sends Berkshire about $848 million a year in dividends.
Breakfast priced by the stock market
McDonald’s covers the morning. Buffett picks up breakfast on his drive to the office, and the stock market decides his order.
“When I’m not feeling quite so prosperous, I might go with the $2.61, which is two sausage patties, and then I put them together and pour myself a Coke,” Buffett said in the 2017 HBO documentary “Becoming Warren Buffett.” “$3.17 is a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit, but the market’s down this morning, so I’ll pass up the $3.17 and go with the $2.95.”
Add See’s candy, Dairy Queen and Utz potato sticks, and you have the lineup that has carried him through his 80s and 90s.
Bill Ackman’s water offer went nowhere
The newest example comes from Pershing Square founder Bill Ackman. He said he once had Buffett over for dinner, stocked up on Cherry Coke ahead of time and still offered his guest still or sparkling water.
“But I said, you know, ‘Don’t you drink water?’” Ackman said on the “Equity Mates Investing” podcast in October. “And he said, ‘Bill, I haven’t had water in 48 years.’”
Ackman didn’t say when the dinner happened. It’s also an odd story coming from him, since he has criticized Berkshire’s Coke investment in the past.
Buffett stepped down as Berkshire chairman in September and handed the seat to his son Howard. He’s still on the board as chairman emeritus, and the Cherry Coke stayed with him.
No dietitian will be prescribing hot fudge sundaes anytime soon. But Buffett’s argument was never really about the food. It’s about enjoying what’s on the plate, and at 96, the man who skipped the broccoli is still here to make it.
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