Drop Dead Healthy by A. Jacobs (books to read to increase intelligence .TXT) 📕

pro–Whole Foods, despite its flaws. She regrets mentioning its nickname, “Whole Paycheck,” in her book. “That was trite,” she says. Yes, it can gobble up your bank account, but the fact that healthy food costs more than artery-clogging food shouldn’t be dismissed with a glib phrase. It’s a complicated issue. (For one thing, Americans spend much less of their paycheck on food than Europeans—an estimated 10 percent to 30 percent. We might have to adjust our priorities.)

I ask her to show me the least healthy food in Whole Foods. “Oh, let’s go look at the breakfast cereals,” she says. “They’re always the most fun.”

We walk to aisle one. And there, we find box after box of cereal with pictures of farmhouses and grain fields. She picks up a carton. She slides her glasses from atop her curly gray hair to her nose, and lasers in on the nutrition label. Nestle has spent more time reading nutrition labels than most Americans have spent reading novels (which, I suppose, isn’t saying much). And she knows how to unlock their secrets.

“Evaporated cane juice,” she reads aloud. “Translation: sugar.”

Really? It sounds so natural.

“Organic molasses,” she keeps reading. “Translation: sugar.”

It’s not better?

“It’s got a few nutrients. But not enough to make a difference. Sugar is sugar.”

What about agave nectar? That’s the healthy sugar, right?

“No.”

Some sugars are slightly better than others, but only slightly. If you eat too much, they all end up as fat and can lead to metabolic syndrome and diabetes and all sorts of other horrible maladies.

A little farther down the aisle are all the faux-healthy protein bars. “Oh, look, it’s organic!” says Nestle, with more than a bit of sarcasm. “There’s now research that shows that when people see the word ‘organic,’ they think it has fewer calories.”

So if high-cane-juice cereals are the least healthy, what foods are the healthiest? Nestle leads me to the produce section.

“Here. Anything in here.”

“Blueberries?” I say. “They’re a superfood.”

“Yes, they’re healthy,” says Nestle. “But I don’t believe in superfoods.”

Hold on now. What’s this?

Nestle thinks that we have an outsize obsession with ranking our fruits and vegetables. Her argument is, in a way, similar to Bratman’s. Our reasoning is too reductive. We figure: Fruits and vegetables are good for you. Fruits and vegetables have antioxidants. Therefore it’s the antioxidants in the fruits and vegetables that are good for you.

This type of thinking leads us to believe the idea that the fruit with the most antioxidants is the best. It makes us overlook all the nonsuperfoods—what one writer called “Clark Kent” foods—such as apples and oranges, which are perfectly healthy. Antioxidants are just one of dozens of good chemicals in food.

Nestle says that the blueberry obsession can be traced, in part, to the clever marketing efforts of the Maine wild blueberry growers. A decade ago, the Maine blueberry industry was in trouble. In years past, blueberry promoters had tried several strategies: They attempted to market blueberries as candy. Even odder, they ran a campaign suggesting blueberries as a condiment to put on hamburgers. Nothing worked. But when a Tufts study said that wild blueberries had a high antioxidant rating, they ran with it, and blueberries have become the prototypical health food.

We finished our Whole Foods adventure and went to lunch at a nearby café. I order the Bibb lettuce salad, dressing on the side.

The waitress looked at Nestle and Nesheim. “Are the profiteroles good?” asks Nestle.

“So good,” says the waitress.

“I’ll have that.”

Huh. I’m here with quite possibly the most knowledgeable nutritionist in the world, and she’s having a plateful of sugar and fat.

“You’ve got to enjoy food,” says Nestle, noticing my raised eyebrows. “It’s one of the great things in life.” She assures me that she eats plenty of fruits and veggies as well.

I’m not a doctor, but I can say with certainty: Marion Nestle does not have orthorexia.

Checkup: Month 6

     Weight: 160

     Average number of errands sprinted per day: 3

     Waist size: 34 (down from 35)

     Pounds lifted on squat machine: 90 (improvement!)

     Sleep per night: 6.4 hours

     Half-ounce Purell bottles used this month: 14

Overall state: I’m feeling okay, though a little stressed out about how much of my book advance I’m spending on fitness equipment. My closets are filling up with a bizarre collection of weights, gadgets, and clothes. It’s as if I were given access to a SkyMall catalog, a cell phone, and a jug of whiskey.

I am now the proud owner of a yoga mat and a Swiss exercise ball. I also have a compression suit from Under Armour. This skintight silver outfit is supposed to help your muscles recover more quickly postworkout by reducing swelling. I wore it to the gym one day, and got plenty of feedback from the gym staff. “Hey, Superman!” “Nanu, nanu!” And so on. But there’s something comforting and womblike about its snugness.

I own a custom-fitted mouthpiece that is supposedly similar to the one worn by Derek Jeter. A modern spin on my eighth-grade retainer, the mouthpiece is designed to open your airways, and relax you by unclenching your jaw. It does make running easier—though I can get the same effect for free by jutting my jaw forward a half inch while running.

Of all the gadgets that clutter my closet, the most successful has been one of the simplest: a twenty-dollar pedometer. Actually, I have two, since Julie agreed to join me in my pedometer experiment.

Studies show that the more you pay attention to your body’s statistics, the greater the chance you’ll adopt a healthy lifestyle. This idea underpins the Quantified Self movement, in which adherents track everything from caloric output to selenium levels.

The mere act of weighing yourself daily makes it more likely you’ll shed pounds, according to a University of Minnesota study. Keeping a food journal makes you eat fewer fatty foods, according to another study. And pedometers make you walk more.

Julie and I wear our silver bubble-shaped pedometers clipped to our pants. Our stated goal is to rack up ten thousand steps per day—an amount that the President’s Council