• Malaysia's former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, 99, says eating in moderation is the key to longevity.
• "Age does not follow time. Age follows bodily health — the way you can function," he told Nikkei Asia.
• The number of people aged 80 or older is expected to reach 426 million worldwide, per WHO estimates.

Malaysia's former prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, will be 100 next year. His secret to longevity? Moderation.

"I don't eat too much. Obesity isn't good for survival," Mahathir told Nikkei Asia during an interview published in November.

"Age does not follow time. Age follows bodily health — the way you can function. Because of that, old age is not because of time; it's not because you are 60 that you are old. You may be 90, but if people at 90 are still strong, still able to work and function, then 90 would not be old age," he said.

Mahathir added that what people think of as old age has changed over time.

"At this moment, 60 or 65 is considered old, but we must remember that in the past, 30 was already old. During the time of Julius Caesar, leaders were only in their 30s because they died very early," he said.

Mahathir first served as Malaysia's prime minister from 1981 to 2003.

He reentered national politics in 2018 in a bid to unseat former prime minister Najib Razak, who had been accused of embezzling millions in state funds in the 1MDB scandal.

That same year, at age 92, Mahathir was elected as the country's prime minister once more — although he resigned a little under two years later.

Looking back on his political career, Mahathir shared that he regretted resigning from his post in 2003, "when I was not even 80 years old."

"When I was in my 70s, approaching 80, I told myself that 80 was very old. I thought I wouldn't be able to function well anymore. However, after I retired, I found that I was still able to work, still able to function," Mahathir said.

Experience comes with age, and society should try to retain older workers so as to not lose the wealth of knowledge that this demographic can provide, he said.

"If you retain older people in the workforce and allow them to continue working instead of retiring too early, you can benefit from their experience," Mahathir said.

During his second tenure as Malaysia's prime minister, Mahathir was considered one of the oldest elected world leaders. The oldest current national leader is President Paul Biya of Cameroon, who is 91 years old. In comparison, Joe Biden, at 82, is the oldest American president.

The number of people aged 80 or older is expected to triple between 2020 and 2050 to reach 426 million worldwide, per WHO estimates.

A representative for Mahathir did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider.

Earlier this fall, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported data showing that adult obesity rates—long trending upwards—had fallen modestly over the past few years, from 41.9 to 40.3 percent. The decline sparked discussion on social media and in major news outlets about whether the US has passed so-called “peak obesity”—and whether the growing use of certain weight-loss drugs might account for the shift.

An opinion piece in the Financial Times suggested that the public health world might look back on the current moment in much the same way that it now reflects on 1963, when cigarette sales hit their high point and then dropped dramatically over the following decades. The article’s author, John Burn-Murdoch, speculated that the dip is “highly likely” to be caused by the use of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists, or GLP-1s, for weight loss.

It's easy to see why one might make that connection. Although GLP-1s have been used for nearly two decades in the treatment of type 2 diabetes, their use for obesity only took off more recently. In 2014, the Food and Drug Administration approved a GLP-1 agonist named Saxenda specifically for this purpose. Then in the late 2010s, a GLP-1 drug named Ozempic, made from the active ingredient semaglutide, began to be used off-label. The FDA also authorized Wegovy, another semaglutide-based GLP-1 medication, explicitly for weight loss in 2021.

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• Bernie Sanders is taking on ultra-processed food in his final weeks leading the Senate health panel.
• Sanders wants the US to catch up with other countries, which have cigarette-style warning labels for food.
• He sees a potential opportunity to work with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on this.

In his final weeks leading the Senate health committee, Sen. Bernie Sanders is taking on "big food."

Sanders led a hearing Thursday to interrogate how ultra-processed foods affect our bodies, and how they are regulated. He is campaigning for legislation that would slap warning labels on the front of ultra-processed foods — a step other countries took years ago.

Speaking to Business Insider on Tuesday, Sanders said he sees warning labels as a necessary first step to influence food manufacturers in America to make healthier products, especially for kids.

"When a parent goes out shopping, they need to know that there are products that are just not healthy for their kids," Sanders said. "In the United States, we have not reached that stage. Other countries are doing a lot better than we are."

Obesity has more than tripled among children since the 1970s, per CDC data, and research suggests ultraprocessed foods play a significant role, though it's not clear why. What we do know is that foods high in added sugars, fats, and sodium make up a majority of the calories we consume, and drive us to eat more.

"Our kids are not healthy enough," Sanders said.

Major food companies say new labels would be expensive to produce, and that the cost would be passed onto consumers. Some argue mandatory warning labels would violate their right to free speech. They say we should stick with the current system: a voluntary policy, where companies can put health warnings on the front of products if they see fit.

A shift may be coming, in part driven by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump's pick for HHS secretary who has promised to "make America healthy again" and clean up the US food system. Kennedy's message has resonated with voters as consumer demand grows for healthier food — more natural, more transparent, less processed.

Food giants are nervous about Kennedy's reign, Jerold Mande, CEO of the advocacy group Nourish Science and a senior member of the USDA during the Obama administration, told Business Insider.

"Having worked on this for decades, the level of response from companies has exceeded anything I've seen" since Michelle Obama's campaign, Mande said. "They're deeply concerned that this is going to be a change."

Sanders said he is ready to ride the MAHA wave, if that's what it will take to clean up American diets.

The pitch: Bring the US up to speed with other countries

Sixteen other countries have mandatory, front-of-package warning labels, including most of Latin America, plus Canada, Iran, Sri Lanka, and Singapore.

Sanders looks at the US's southern neighbor, Mexico, as inspiration. During our interview, he pulled up a photo of two bottles of Coca-Cola, one sold in the US and the other in Mexico. The Mexican bottle has big black octagonal boxes that say "excess sugars," "excess calories," and "caffeine warning, not recommended for children."

"That's kind of common sense," Sanders said. "I think if most parents knew that there were 10 or 15 teaspoons of sugar in this drink, I suspect many parents would say, 'Sorry, Joe, you can't have that.' It would put pressure on the industry to start producing healthier products."

The Coca Cola Company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the American Beverage Association said the industry has taken voluntary steps to curb sugar for kids, such as not advertising to children and removing full-calorie products from schools.

According to research conducted in these countries, it can work — if the front-of-package labeling is clear.

In Chile, which has similar black boxes to Mexico, people dramatically reduced the amount of sugar-, fat-, and sodium-heavy products they were buying after labels changed. Companies have also reformulated their products in the country to avoid a warning label, cutting sugar, fat, and sodium levels.

How the US can get this done remains a mystery, Katherine Miller, founder of nutrition advocacy group Table 81, told Business Insider.

"I mean, there are 20 different pieces of the federal government that regulate our eggs," Miller said. "How do we really think we're going to get front of the label, the front-of-the-package labeling in a short period of time that will align the scientific community, the food systems community, the health community, and corporations? That doesn't feel realistic."

The US is already testing out new food labels that flag bad ingredients

The Food and Drug Administration has designed two options for what these new labels could look like on the front of food and drinks.

One version would flag a product as "high in" sugar, sodium, or fat, if it exceeds 20% of the daily recommended limit. Another version would use a color-coded system to grade the levels of sugar, sodium, and fat in the product ("low" for under 5%, "high" for over 20%, "medium" for anything in between).

The agency has spent months testing both options in focus groups.

Sanders says it doesn't go far enough.

He proposed legislation that would force food companies to put a stop sign on anything ultra-processed or high-sugar, similar to cigarettes.

Sanders — who says he is "guilty as anybody else" when it comes to eating and snacking — begrudges how difficult it is to make healthy choices and how easy it is to accidentally ingest copious amounts of fat, sodium, or sugar.

"Some years ago, I was thirsty and I picked up a bottle of something, it was a juice, and I gulped it down as usual," Sanders recalled in the interview. "A little while later, my stomach, I really felt very queasy. I looked at the label and I saw the amount of sugar that was in it."

It was a lot higher than he expected from a quick glance at the bottle.

"The industry has done a very good job in selling us products that are cheap to produce, that make us unhealthy. And that's something Congress has got to deal with."

The problem: A game of whack-a-mole with food companies

The argument against front-of-package labeling, from a health perspective, is that it could delay more concrete action.

It could also lead to unexpected consequences, Mande said.

In the '90s, when he helped design the original Nutrition Facts panel, the goal was low fat. A flurry of new research had recently come out showing fat was linked to heart disease.

Food manufacturers complied, cutting fat from their products — but often swapped it for something else. Take Snackwell's, a now defunct diet cookie brand that offered the pleasure of a sweet treat without the consequences. Problem was, the brand replaced fat with refined carbohydrates.

"We didn't anticipate the harm it would cause," Mande said. Three decades later, health advocates are trying to cut refined carbs in food due to the increased risk of diabetes.

Sanders said front-of-package labeling is the best card we have to play right now.

"I think it's one thing that you've got to do," he said. "It would put pressure on the industry to start producing healthier products."

Next step: Teeing up RFK Jr.

The Senate hearing saw more bipartisan agreement than advocates expected.

"Not one Senator defended the food industry. Big food is in big tobacco territory," Mande said.

Still, it comes at an inflection point. FDA Commissioner Rob Califf is on his way out, and there's no knowing whether his nominated successor, Marty Makary, will want to follow through on his plans for front-of-package labels.

Plus, it's unclear if Makary will have the funds to do so, since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he will gut the FDA if he is confirmed as HHS Secretary. (Kennedy did not respond to a request for a comment.)

Sanders hopes this discussion will harness the buzz around Kennedy's MAHA movement to make warning labels a policy priority.

"When Kennedy talks about an unhealthy society, he's right. The amount of chronic illness that we have is just extraordinary," Sanders said.

"Anybody with a brain in his or her head wants to deal with this issue, to get to the cause of the problem. I think processed food and the kind of sugar and salt that we have in products that our kids and adults are ingesting is an important part of addressing that crisis."

In an exclusive interview with Business Insider's Mia de Graaf, Sen. Bernie Sanders talks about his push to improve labels on ultra-processed foods across the US, RFK Jr.'s plans to overhaul the industry, and the obesity epidemic.

Patients in China will be able to purchase the blockbuster weight-loss drug Wegovy for 1,400 yuan, or about $193, just a fraction of the US list price of $1,349, according to media reports.

The price in China is in line with pricing elsewhere outside of the US. As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) noted in a September Senate hearing, Wegovy, made by Novo Nordisk, is sold for $265 in Canada, $186 in Denmark, $137 in Germany, and just $92 in the United Kingdom. In the hearing, Sanders and other senators grilled Novo Nordisk CEO Lars Jørgensen on the "outrageously high prices" in the US of Wegovy and the company's other popular GLP-1 drug, Ozempic, used for diabetes.

"What we are dealing with today is not just an issue of economics, it is not just an issue of corporate greed. It is a profound moral issue," Sanders said in opening remarks about the prices of the highly effective drugs.

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