Drop Dead Healthy
One Man's Humble Quest For Bodily Perfection
by A.J. Jacobs
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Drop Dead Healthy
I’ve made a list of more than a hundred diets. The Mediterranean diet. The USDA diet. The Michael Pollan eat-what-your-grandparents-ate diet. The Blood-type diet. The Paleo diet. The Okinawa diet. Veganism. Raw foodism. Not to mention the more outré ones, like The Cookie Diet. The Rastafarian diet. The Master-Cleanse diet.
I want to try them all. Well, maybe not The Taco Bell Drive-Thru Diet (it exists). But most of the others. Eventually, that is. The thing is, studies show that if you switch habits too rapidly, the changes don’t stick. So my plan is to wade into my new diets slowly, like my five-year-old son entering a chilly pool.
Which is how I’ve decided on my first dietary reforms: more chocolate, booze, and coffee.
“Salud,” I say to Julie as I pour a cup of Starbucks Gold Coast on my first morning.
That night, our friends Paul and Lisa – who are visiting New York from D.C. – come over for an informal Thai dinner. Before the meal, as we wait for the delivery guy, I hand out glasses of Pinot Noir, and dig out a Toblerone bar from the fridge.
“So when does your health thing start?” Paul asks.
“It started today,” I say, breaking off a triangular chunk.
Paul gives me a questioning look.
“He also had two cups of coffee this morning,” says Julie. “That’s his new health plan: chocolate, coffee, and wine.”
“All very good for you,” I say.
“Huh. Sounds like you’re really committing yourself to this project,” says Paul.
“How about heroin?” asks Lisa. “I hear that it’s loaded with antioxidants.”
Everyone has a good laugh.
Clever. But Paul and Lisa have to acknowledge, science is on my side. Consider:
• As the Mars Corporation gleefully and regularly points out, dark chocolate is, in fact, loaded with antioxidants and has been shown to cut the risk of heart disease and stroke. It also might be good for the eyes: According to at least one study, chocolate improves contrast sensitivity.
• A bunch of studies has shown that alcohol is good for your heart in judicious amounts (one glass per day for women, one to two for men) and that moderate drinkers live longer than both teetotalers and heavy drinkers. That includes drinkers of beer or liquor, not just the highly trumpeted red wine, though red wine does contain the much beloved resveratrol, which might have age-resistant effects.
• Coffee lowers the odds of several types of cancer (bladder, breast, prostate, and liver) as well as Alzheimer’s. It has some downsides (more than two cups can cause sleeplessness and raise cholesterol), and isn’t quite as healthy as its cousin green tea, but drunk in moderation, coffee’s benefits outweigh the risks.
Sadly, I do understand my Vice Diet won’t lead me to everlasting health. Chocolate, alcohol, and coffee are outliers. In general, food that tastes good is bad for the body. As Jack LaLanne liked to say: “If it tastes good, spit it out.”
Which is a bizarre situation. Evolution has betrayed us here. The human body – as miraculous as it can be – is in many ways a malfunctioning machine, a biological version of a 1978 Ford Pinto.
If evolution worked perfectly, healthy food would taste delicious and unhealthy food would make us gag. On Halloween, kids would fill their pails with quinoa and cauliflower. Dairy Queen would sell millions of bok choy Blizzards.
Copyright © 2012 by A.J. Jacobs
Drop Dead Healthy
How does one become as healthy as humanly possible? A.J. Jacobs resolved to do whatever it took to gain bodily perfection, and he reports on his colorful experiences in his amusing and enlightening new book Drop Dead Healthy.
Over the course of two years, Jacobs subjected himself to a grueling regimen of exercises, a range of diets and nutritional plans—many contradicting each other—and a brutal array of techniques to improve everything from his hearing to his sleep. He assembled his own board of medical advisers from Harvard and Johns Hopkins and compiled a to-do list 53 pages long—including items such as “watch baseball” (which lowers blood pressure according to one study) and “hum” (which allegedly prevents colds).
Early on, Jacobs joins the caloric restriction movement—in which a near-starvation diet appears to increase lifespans dramatically—but suffers a relapse after only one day. Later, to improve his heart, he tries the Caveman Workout in New York City’s Central Park, tossing boulders and running barefoot through the park with a group of like-minded men—but quits after stepping on a glass splinter. He further discovers that sitting down when we go to the bathroom isn’t as healthy as squatting, and learns that being cold helps us burn more calories. In one of the book’s funniest episodes, he enrolls in a pole dancing class—the only man in a class filled with 50 women. (“My performance resembled a fourth grade asthma sufferer trying to climb the rope in gym class,” he writes.) Later on, he does eye exercises to improve his vision, and, for good measure, he trains for (and completes) a triathlon.
Drop Dead Healthy will have you laughing so hard, you may drop a few pounds just by reading it.
Hardcover : 384 pages
Publisher: Simon And Schuster, Inc. ( April 10, 2012 )
Item #: 13-504338
ISBN: 9781416599074
Product Dimensions: 6.125 x 9.25 inches
Product Weight: 23.0 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Copyright © Bookspan. Scientific American® is a registered trademark, used under license. Unauthorized use prohibited. All rights reserved.
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