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

as opposed to the national average of 77.8. Why? Theories vary, but most agree that a lot of it has to do with the amount New Yorkers walk. As the city’s former commissioner of public health told New York magazine, our metropolis is like one big gym.

“Though you could have done a little better,” I say. “Like Okinawa.”

The southern Japanese prefecture has the highest number of centenarians, thanks to a mix of factors (steep hills for walking, lots of manual labor even among the elderly, a low-fat, low-sugar diet, etc.).

“Or you could have been a Seventh-day Adventist in San Diego.” Another cluster of extremely long-lived people, thanks in part to close family ties and a strict no-meat diet.

“The what now?” he says.

“Seventh-day Adventists. They’re a religious group. You could join.”

“I think it’s too late.”

Checkup: Month 15

     Weight: 158

     Packs of gum chewed since tooth chapter: 48

     Minutes spent meditating per day: 10

     Minutes of that when actually meditating as opposed to thinking of something trivial: 2

My sedentary behavior is down to about four hours a day. Have I mentioned how much I love walking on the treadmill? I type on it, brush my teeth on it, take my fish-oil supplements on it. It gives me a sense of accomplishment, as odd as that may sound for something designed to keep you in place. I’ve now been working on this book for 880 miles. I’m hoping to break a thousand by the end.

I often wonder what the previous me would think of the me that I’ve become. I’m now the guy who wears bike shorts even when not biking. I’m the only one at parties who actually eats the crudités. At restaurants, I ask if the salmon is farm-raised or wild. And that it not be blackened (blackening has been linked to cancer). And that there be no starch on the plate when it is served.

I think the previous me would not return my e-mails.

Chapter 16

The Stomach, Revisited

The Continued Quest for the Perfect Diet

I’M EATING A LOT OF the same foods every day, which I’m not sure is such a good idea. Here’s my daily menu for the last month or so:

     Breakfast: two scrambled egg whites in canola oil, a handful of walnuts, a bowl of steel-cut oatmeal topped with organic blueberries, strawberries, and flaxseed oil.

     Lunch: chopped salad of spinach, broccoli, red cabbage, mixed peppers, peas, tomatoes, avocado, artichoke hearts, beets, and (sometimes) sunflower seeds. No dressing.

     Afternoon snack: fat-free Greek yogurt with cantaloupe and grapes. Three spoonfuls of hummus.

     Dinner: quinoa, steamed asparagus, Dr. Praeger’s spinach pancake. And three times a week, grilled wild salmon with lemon juice (sorry, Marti). Glass of red wine. Maybe two.

It’s basically a modified Mediterranean diet, the diet that is perhaps supported by the most studies. I don’t mind the sameness. It’s my comfort food. But for the sake of health, I should probably mix it up more. Do something crazy, like substitute bulgur for quinoa.

And for the sake of self-experimentation, I should go to the extremes. I should road-test some of the diets I’ve been reading about. For the next few weeks, I pledge to sample the two poles of the nutrition world: the raw-food vegan diet and the Paleo-Atkins-type diet.

Raw Food

My aunt Marti is in town, and we meet at a vegan restaurant on the East Side called Candle 79. I’ve asked Marti to give me a personal Idiot’s Guide to raw foodism.

We sit down in the back corner. Marti doesn’t like the toxins emitted by the eponymous candles. She asks that the one on our table be removed.

“It’s not a real candle,” says the waitress. “It’s electric.”

“I’d still like it taken away—the electromagnetic pollution.”

With the candle gone, I ask Marti’s advice on going raw. “You’re going to have to get over your aversion to making your own food,” she tells me.

I need to get: a blender, a slicer, a spiralizer, a dehydrator, spirulina powder, blue-green algae crystals, and Himalayan or Celtic sea salt. I need a juicer, but not just any juicer—I need it with an auger gear, not a centrifuge, since the blades oxidize the food and lower its nutritional value.

Oh man. As I scribble my notes, I feel my book advance slowly slipping away.

My auger-geared juicer arrived a couple of days later. Within an hour I had baptized it in blood from my ring finger, which I accidentally sliced while fitting the parts together.

I took out my plastic bags of organic cucumbers, kale, carrots, beets, Swiss chard, and zucchini. I put the zucchini into the juicer and pushed down. Nothing. I pushed harder. A whirring and thumping as the juicer devoured the zucchini and drooled out a weak green stream on the other end. That’s right. I’m juicing!

After decimating several vegetables, I decide juicing is my favorite form of food preparation. There’s something perversely appealing about subjecting an innocent plant to that much violence. It’s the closest I’ll ever get to gutting a fish or field dressing a deer.

The juicing takes forty-five minutes, much of that time devoted to rinsing the myriad parts. As Marti warned, raw food is astoundingly time-consuming. You’d think not cooking would be a time-saver. You would be wrong.

And juicing is microwave-quick compared to another noncooking technique: dehydrating. My dehydrator was delivered the other day—an air conditioner–size black box with removable shelves. In raw food circles, you’re forbidden from using heat higher than 104°F because it supposedly destroys the living enzymes. So the dehydrator blows warm air on your food for hours, sometimes days. It reminds me of the temperature and intensity of dog’s breath. So imagine a German shepherd exhaling on your fruit for a weekend. I dried apples, oranges, carrots, strawberries, and blueberries into chewy leathery slices. Not bad, the family agreed. Dehydrating is glacial, but at least it’s hard to screw up.

After two weeks of juicing and dehydrating, here’s my assessment:

Positive: I feel lighter and cleaner. And I discovered that raw food, if prepared properly, can be tasty. I’ve spent hours