The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.

The line plays on the familiar genre of “youth secrets” by offering two earnest-sounding prescriptions—living honestly and eating slowly—before puncturing the self-help tone with a comic twist: the real “secret” is simply to misrepresent one’s age. In Lucille Ball’s persona, the joke also reflects a show-business reality in which women in particular faced pressure to appear perpetually youthful. The humor works by juxtaposing moral virtue and bodily discipline with a socially performative, slightly mischievous act, suggesting that “youth” is as much a cultural narrative as a biological fact.