You do not have to feel or be your calendar age. Seventy percent of premature aging is caused by the choices we make. By making some good choices, such as eating well, you can slow down or even reverse the signs of aging. And the best way to eat well is by revising key elements of the most important room in your home—the kitchen.
Just as what you eat makes a big difference in how old you feel and how old you actually are, it also amazingly makes a difference in what proteins your genes produce. As we learn more about genes, we learn how much we can modify their actions. The specific proteins they produce and the ratio of proteins any two genes make is at least partially under your control. This chapter is about how we can stock our kitchens and change what we eat to control our genes, ultimately keeping us and our families energetic and younger.
The response to our first book, RealAge, which provided consistent scientific data that you can control your rate of aging, has been overwhelming. Thousands of e-mails have told me that knowing the effect of a healthy choice—for example, knowing that eating an ounce of nuts a day makes the average 55-year-old man more than 3.3 years younger—was empowering. Such knowledge motivated individuals to make healthier choices. For the first year after that book was published, I received an average of 1,500 e-mails a day from readers. People told me they loved having a way of measuring their rate of aging and, even better, had found some simple steps for slowing that process.
As explained in The RealAge Diet, consistent scientific data show that eating the RealAge way—great-tasting, healthy food that is colorful—can make you younger. The scientific advisory group of RealAge has a strict standard to follow: no food choice (and no other health factor, for that matter) is said to have a RealAge effect (e.g., “Enjoying a half-ounce of dark—cocoa based—chocolate before each meal can make you 1.9 years younger”) unless that effect has been shown to occur in at least four studies on humans. In addition, each RealAge food choice should be (and is, as confirmed by taste tests) every bit as satisfying and delicious as the energy-sapping, aging foods so widespread in the American diet. My patients and readers love knowing that simple, easy changes in food choices make a measurable difference in their health.
This is where cooking the RealAge way comes in. Perhaps a patient story helps: Steve I. was a 52-year-old hard-driving executive. His wife, Nancy, cared deeply about him, so when he was home for dinner (he ate out or was away two or three nights every week), Nancy cooked his favorite roasts or steaks. She punctuated every meal with great vegetables and a good salad, but Nancy always had his favorite coffee ice cream (to make him feel like home was a comfortable spot); and on planes or on the road he ate whatever was being served (he traveled in first class often, owing to his frequent flyer status); Mrs. Field’s cookies and ice cream for dessert were rewards. And he ate whatever everybody else was eating at meetings. He and his wife exercised two or three times a week when he was at home. But he was getting more tired, enjoying the work less, and his arthritis started to act up. So his wife forced him to see me.
We found his RealAge was thirteen years older than his calendar age; he was really 65, not 52, and he felt it. So he made small changes that made a big difference. Just changing to nuts and chocolate-covered fruit as a snack, ordering fish or vegetarian meals in advance on planes, asking for olive oil, throwing the creamy dressings out, and stocking the kitchen with a balsamic vinegar he adored, his wife making RealAge dishes he loved, and prioritizing 20 minutes of exercise a day, he transformed himself easily into someone who felt 45 not 65. Actually, he became 45 (his RealAge decreased to 45 over three years). He became vigorous and regained his zest for life, and he looked it. So did his wife, who became transformed as well.
And it was easy, they say. It started by understanding why we feel and get older, and how easy it is to deliciously transform our eating. It just started and was (and is) done with easy changes in the kitchen. Nancy looked and felt younger, too—Steve and she each lost weight (18 and 9 pounds, respectively)—but that was not their goal. They wanted to feel the zest for life and energy that had gradually slipped away. They wanted the energy to help their children build families and to enjoy their grandchildren. They just didn’t know how easy it was; neither did I until I started to learn about how we can control our genes—how solid that science was—that started for me more than twenty years after I was a doctor, and more than ten years ago.
Now many of us wish we could be 9 or 18 pounds lighter, or feel and be twenty years younger. And we can. That it is easy and predictable is the great news. Steve and Nancy’s story is not unique and their transformation is not unusual or different. Many others (myself and my wife included) have done it. And it is not even hard; it is even fun. I want you to learn what I’ve learned—it’s too easy and too important not to learn it. RealAge: Are You As Young As You Can Be? and The RealAge Diet: Make Yourself Younger with What You Eat reveal the scientific principles and strategies to help you make yourself younger. The goal of the first two RealAge books was to help you understand the science behind control of your genes. This book does only a little of that. Much more of the book applies these concepts to preparation of food—how to cook food so it tastes great and makes your RealAge younger. Reading this book and cooking the RealAge way is an easy way to look, feel, and be at least five to eight years and probably fourteen years younger than your calendar age.
I’m a medical doctor and a research scientist. My co-author, John La Puma, is also a medical doctor, as well as a professionally trained chef. We take enormous pride in knowing that the RealAge concepts have helped so many people add extra, vigorous, quality-filled years to their lives. It’s not just about living longer. It’s about enjoying a higher quality of life at all ages.
Unfortunately, too many of us have come to think of cooking and eating in the wrong way. We eat food out of habit and convenience, instead of making our meals a joyful focal point in our lives. Instead of celebrating food, we feel ambivalent about it. Time spent sharing a meal with loved ones should be a celebration. Food nourishes us, sustains us, makes us grow, and gives us energy. It is a positive force in our lives, making us feel good, alive, and younger every day. Grow old gracefully? Not you. You’ll live life to your youngest!
In this book, we show how to take our healthy concepts and bring them into your home, literally. The best way to begin eating well is by revising key elements of the most important room in your home—the kitchen. Simply put, transforming your kitchen is an easy way to transform your health. A little science will slip in, especially in this chapter, but the book aims primarily to make healthy cooking easy and the results delicious.
With some effort and a little practice, you can create RealAge-smart and energy-giving meals that are as delicious as those created by a top chef but without all the cream and butter. But before you learn how, you might want to know something about the RealAge concept and a little of the science behind it. Then you’ll understand how much you can control how well and how long you will live.
The RealAge Concept
Those who have read RealAge and The RealAge Diet are already familiar with the RealAge concept, which states that the fundamental source of your overall good health is the good maintenance of two of the most important systems in the body: the cardiovascular system (the heart and blood vessels) and the immune system. While we do not know the molecular basis of aging, we do know what ages. The aging of your arteries is responsible for such potentially disabling conditions as strokes, heart attacks, memory loss, impotence, decay in the quality of orgasm, and wrinkling of your skin. And aging of the other major system, the immune system, can lead to autoimmune diseases, such as arthritis; to serious infections, such as pneumonia; and to cancer. RealAge identifies what factors are important in your aging processes for these systems, how you can change those factors to keep yourself younger, and the relative value of such choices. For example, eating an ounce of nuts a day keeps the average 55-year-old man 3.3 years younger. Similarly, consuming less than 20 grams of saturated and trans fats a day (see below) makes the average 55-year-old woman 2.7 years younger. RealAge is really like money: it places a value on your choices. There are many choices you can make to keep your arteries and immune system younger.
The good news is that to a large extent we do not have to be at the mercy of fate or heredity. Seventy percent of premature aging is caused by the choices we make. By making some easy choices, you can slow—or even reverse—aging, regardless of your inherited genetics. The choices that can easily make you younger include food choices.
Getting Back to the Basics
A walk down the aisle of any grocery store will reveal the predominance of foods high in the kinds of fat that age you (not all fat ages you), and in simple sugars and salt. Although this quickly reveals the extent to which the quality of the average American diet has declined, it also shows to what extent most of us have forgotten, or have never experienced, the most fundamental pleasures of cooking and enjoying our kitchens.
The existence of prepared mixes for bread machines is a perfect example. To make bread in a bread machine, you measure flour, water, yeast, milk, and salt and then press a button. Nothing could be simpler. However, the fact that Nancy (of Steve and Nancy above) served her family bread made in this machine with a commercially packaged mix that is full of added chemicals, stabilizers, and sodium—just to save the time necessary for collecting and measuring ingredients—shows the extent to which many of us feel too busy to spend time measuring, pouring, and mixing in our own kitchens. Nancy just didn’t know. She did care. Probably this predominance of packaged food is partly due to the prevalence of busier-than-ever two-career families. Many busy working people regard grocery shopping and cooking as just two more chores at the end of a stress-filled day. This need not be the case. Armed with a “smart” kitchen—one that has the right ingredients and equipment—and an understanding of simple cooking techniques, you can quickly and easily create a great-tasting, healthy, and energy-giving meal. How you stock your kitchen can result in a high IQ: a kitchen with a high IQ is smart enough to help control your genes and make your RealAge younger.
Like everything else that is important in life, learning to change habits, such as switching from aging to age-reducing food choices, takes a little dedication and persistence. In a short time, your new RealAge-smart habits will become such a natural part of your life that you’ll wonder how you ever lived any other way. Learning how to cook and how to enjoy a great-tasting, RealAge-smart meal will take some practice, it’s true. But you wouldn’t expect to break 90 on your first day on the golf course. Similarly, it will take time to retrain your taste buds (a key to enjoying great tasting food). Soon, however, your RealAge dishes will taste better than the artery-aging bucket of greasy fried chicken or the energy-sapping take-out food you would have chosen. I know because I, too, had to work to change bad eating habits. It was also challenging for a doctor whose food specialty was toast to learn how to cook. But now I’m full of energy, I keep my weight at a steady low level, and best of all, I’ve made myself younger—and I enjoy the extra vitality.
The Science Behind the Numbers
If you chart the health, longevity, and, ultimately, youth of a “population age cohort”—a group of people all born in the same year—you will find that, with few exceptions, people age at a similar rate until they reach their late twenties or mid-thirties. With the exception of those who have inherited rare genetic disorders or have been in serious accidents, everyone is basically healthy and able. Men reach the peak of their performance curve in their late twenties, women in their mid-thirties. At that time, our bodies have fully matured, and we are at our strongest and most mentally acute. Then, somewhere between 28 and 36 years of age, most people reach a turning point, a transition from “growing” into “aging.”
If you examine the population as a whole and track any one biological function—be it kidney function or cognitive ability—performance declines as we age. In general, after the age of 35, each biological function decreases about 5 percent every ten years. That decrease is a measure of the average for the population as a whole. Although these kinds of measurements have been the standards used by scientists to calculate the rate of aging, the averages don’t take into account variation between individuals. The variation is so great among people over 40 that it is often meaningless to calculate an average at all. Averages are statistically meaningful only if the values for the people or things being measured actually congregate closely around the midpoint (that is, if everyone is pretty much the same).
When we age, there is so much variation between individuals over age 40 that the “average” obscures more than it shows. Rather than gathering around a mean (the midpoint), there are people in every age group who manifest every level of functioning. Some show dramatic decline, others show virtually no decline. What you eat contributes mightily to this difference between people. Twins who choose different lifestyles or foods age at different rates. People with genetic diseases such as type II diabetes can age at different rates if they make different choices.
Our genes matter. Genes simply make proteins—that is how genes cause their effects. But how much of each protein a gene makes changes as we grow older and the ratio of some proteins to other proteins changes as we grow older. But changing what we eat, for example from red meat to fish, might change the ratio of proteins from that typical of an older person to one typical of a younger person. Feeding your genes more B6, B12, and folate may make them less vulnerable to chromosome breaks or substitutions. This type of change in what your genes produce or how they function with a change in your habits exemplifies the control you can exert over your genes and the diseases that are characteristic of aging. And you do not have to memorize long lists—it is easy to put it into everyday choices.
First, a Little Science
Aging of the Arteries
Keeping your arteries young and healthy is the single most important thing you can do for your health. Simply put, you’re as young as your arteries. When your arteries are not taken care of properly—for example, when your diet is high in saturated or trans fats—they get clogged with fatty buildup, diminishing the amount of oxygen and nutrients that can get to the cells.
There are four major types of dietary fat: saturated, polyunsaturated, monounsaturated, and trans fat. The first three occur naturally. The fourth, trans fat, is usually an artificially created product that mimics saturated fat. Trans fat—also called trans fatty acid—is created when unsaturated fats are hydrogenated (combined with hydrogen). The purpose of this chemical process is to create fats that are solid at room temperature rather than liquid, their normal state at room temperature. For example, most solid margarine is produced by transforming (through partial hydrogenation) good vegetable oils into bad vegetable oils. Even though a food label doesn’t use the exact words “trans fat,” if you see “partially hydrogenated vegetable oils” or “hydrogenated oils” as an ingredient, you can be sure the product contains trans fat. Any fat that is liquid when heated but hardens when cooled to room temperature is probably made of either saturated or trans fat. If the fat is solid when cool, it will age you. For example, most stick margarine is trans fat, as is much of the glaze on doughnuts.
Since food producers are not required to list trans fats on their nutrition labels, trans fat is called “the hidden fat.” The FDA has proposed that the trans fat content of food be listed on labels by mid-2003. Some food manufacturers are fighting this requirement. Many packaged foods—cookies, crackers, and chips—contain these oils because they give food a longer shelf life (and you a shorter life filled with more disability). Many cookies and crackers claim to be “baked, not fried,” or to have “no saturated fat” or “no cholesterol.” This implies they’re low in fat, when in fact they’re often full of trans fat. It doesn’t matter if the product is cholesterol-free; if it contains trans fat, it will age your arteries and immune system.
When your arteries get clogged with fatty buildup, not only your cardiovascular system but also your entire body ages more quickly. Cardiovascular disease, which is brought on by aging of the arteries, is the major cause of heart attacks, strokes, many types of kidney disease, and memory loss. Even mild forms of vascular disease that won’t actually kill you can sap your energy and make you feel old and tired.
Aging of the arteries also causes impotence, diminished quality of orgasm, and even wrinkling of the skin.
Luckily, small, easy-to-make changes in food choices and in lifestyle can profoundly improve your arterial health and can reverse a great deal of the aging that has already taken place. Simply eating certain foods, such as a little garlicky olive oil in a pasta dish or a great-tasting tomato sauce, can reduce the fatty arterial-wall buildup that can lead to vascular disease. More than six studies in the highest-quality peer-reviewed medical literature have reported that both garlic and olive oil decrease aging of the arteries, and that the two, eaten together regularly, can make you over three years younger if you’re a 50-year-old man or two years younger if you’re a 50-year-old woman. What’s more, garlic and olive oil taste great.
These foods can also decrease the likelihood that a cell will have a break in its DNA that could lead to cancer. That’s right; just switching from one fat (butter or margarine) to another (olive or nut oil) can make your arteries and immune system many years younger.
Aging of the Immune System
In addition to taking care of your arteries, don’t let your immune system make you old. As you age, your immune system begins to get sloppy, ignoring important warning signals and becoming negligent. You can end up with cancer or another disorder caused by a malfunction of the immune system. For example, when you are young—except in relatively rare cases—genetic controls in your cells protect your cells from becoming cancerous. If one of these cellular controls slips up, all is not lost. Your larger immune system can identify precancerous cells in the body and eliminate them. Thus, your body has a double block against cancer, one on the cellular level and one on the organism-wide level.
As you age, both the cell-based genetic controls and your immune system become more likely to malfunction, and you are more likely to develop a cancerous tumor. Also, many types of arthritis are examples of a breakdown of the immune system, which is why arthritis is another disease associated with aging. Luckily, some food choices, such as having a bowl of fresh mixed berries as an afternoon snack, can help your body shed free radicals (substances that can cause cell damage), which lessens your chance of getting arthritis, macular degeneration (a disease that destroys vision), and even cancer. (Nature got it right: the best foods are almost always the most naturally delicious and the most colorful.) The RealAge kitchen program also helps reduce the stress in your life; stress can upset the balance of the immune system.
Getting Younger with Lycopene
The tomato-sauce story is even more important to aging, and even more scientifically solid than the garlic–olive oil story. There are more than thirty studies in humans showing that consumption of 10 tablespoons of tomato sauce a week decrease the likelihood of cancer. Breast and prostate cancer are the two cancers for which the most evidence exists for prevention of cancer by consumption of tomato sauce or, more precisely, lycopene, the carotenoid in tomato sauce that is believed to be the active ingredient for health. Although lycopene is also found in guava, watermelon, and pink grapefruit, it is most easily absorbed from cooked tomatoes combined with a little oil.
Although we do not use test-tube data when calculating a RealAge effect—we use only data from studies on human beings—it should be noted that the addition of lycopene (from tomatoes) to human cells in test tubes and cell cultures has decreased the number of breaks that occur in DNA. Such breaks are thought to be the precursors of cancer. So, in addition to a substantial amount of data in human beings that tomato sauce decreases the risk of cancer, biologic evidence from test tubes gives us a mechanism for the effect. These data may not thrill your taste buds, but tomatoes can. Having 10 tablespoons of tomato sauce a week makes the typical 55-year-old man 1.9 years younger and the typical 55-year-old woman 0.7 years younger.
There may be a bonus to keeping your RealAge younger with lycopene, whatever the source. As of this writing, three studies in humans have shown that lycopene is associated with an impressive reversal, or slowing, of aging of the arteries. Because we must have four supporting studies in humans before we claim that a factor produces an effect on RealAge, we cannot say that consumption of lycopene decreases aging of the arteries. If, however, the data from these three studies are corroborated in a fourth study, that will increase tomato’s RealAge effect, making 10 tablespoons a week of tomato sauce give you a three-year benefit. Eating tomato sauce is a pretty easy and delicious way to make your RealAge younger, don’t you think? And maybe realizing just that—that it was easy and fun to make yourself more than half a year younger—is why it’s so enjoyable to make a few RealAge-smart choices.
What’s Your RealAge Now?
If you’d like to know your RealAge, and you have access to the Internet, you can take the RealAge quiz online at www.RealAge.com. There is no charge for this service. Your account stores RealAge information about you that can be accessed and updated by you as many times as you like. All information is completely confidential and accessible only by you through a password you choose as you use the Web site to chart and update your progress.
The computer test takes about thirty-five minutes to complete. You’ll need to know your blood pressure, heart rate, weight, height, cholesterol values (both total cholesterol and high density lipoprotein cholesterol), triglyceride value, c-reactive protein, and the amounts of any vitamins or supplements you take. (If you do not know these values, the average for your gender and age will be used until you provide your values.) After you’ve answered all the questions, the computer calculates your RealAge. This rarely takes more than two minutes. Similarly, you can determine your kitchen’s IQ, and see the effect of your kitchen’s IQ on your RealAge. After completing either test, you are also given a list of suggestions tailored to your health and behavior profile, how to make your RealAge younger, and how to stock your kitchen.
Planning to Get Younger
These suggestions are a list of possible choices you can adopt to make your RealAge younger. Select the suggestions you would consider incorporating into your life—for example, eating 5 ounces of nuts a week, substituting an olive oil and balsamic vinegar salad dressing for one containing saturated fat, or adding three 4-ounce portions of fish to your diet every week. The computer then recalculates your RealAge in light of these new behaviors. In this way, you can see how much of a difference each choice would make. For example, adopting the suggestions on nuts, fish, and salad dressing might make you 5.4 years younger three years after you adopted those behaviors. The computer thus helps you set goals, showing what your RealAge would be in three months, one year, and three years if you follow your plan. One of the easy ways that most of us can slow our aging is to make small changes in the way we set up our kitchen.
How to Implement the RealAge Concept in Your Kitchen
The Goals of RealAge
Learning to live the RealAge way is like learning to do anything—riding a bike, using a computer, reading. Practice and a little coaching go a long way. Changing your kitchen habits and your eating habits (and other food-related habits, such as cooking regularly at home or being a smarter grocery shopper) requires just a little time and just a little consistency. If you aren’t used to cooking healthy meals for your family, it isn’t second nature. But to make healthy eating an enjoyable, natural part of your life, you just have to take the first step. It’s easier and more fun than you ever imagined!
The goal of increasing your kitchen IQ and RealAge cooking is age reduction—giving you a higher quality of life and more vigor every day. Weight reduction is a side effect of this diet that many find an unexpected bonus. However, feeling better every day, and feeling the power of more energy every day, are the benefits patients tell me I can guarantee if you cook the RealAge way for ninety days.
Making Every Calorie Delicious and Nutrient-Rich
If you are aware of the amount of saturated and trans fat you consume and make everything you eat nutrient-rich, calorie-poor, and delicious, it will be hard for you to gain weight unless you are malnourished. It will be easy to maintain or lose weight.
You won’t go far astray if you remember the RealAge mantra: whenever you eat, make every calorie delicious and nutrient-rich. Learn the pleasure of spending time in a well-stocked, RealAge-smart kitchen, or what we call a “high-IQ kitchen.” Include your friends and loved ones, so that you have the pleasure of their company and, at the same time, the satisfaction of seeing them become more vibrant and energized as a result of the healthy foods you’re serving them.
The food choices of the average American are responsible for approximately one-third of his or her rate of aging. Other choices, which are discussed in the RealAge books or on the Web site, determine the other two-thirds of the rate of aging: stress, group participation, family history, job choices, physical activities, and good and bad habits, such as flossing, wearing a helmet when you bike, or smoking. Regularly eating nutrient-poor, calorie-rich choices such as “Cinnabons,” “Bloomin’ Onions,” or “Cheesecake Factory Carrot Cake” can make your RealAge as much as thirteen years older than your calendar age. In contrast, eating delicious foods that are nutrient-rich (our Warm Spinach Salad with Chicken, Apples, and Toasted Almonds—the recipe is in The RealAge Diet, page 351, or any of the recipes in this book) can make you fourteen years younger than your calendar age. Every item you choose to eat should be world class in taste and nutrients. If you choose great-tasting foods that are full of vitamins, minerals, nutrients, and fiber rather than empty calories, you’re eating the RealAge way.
My friends have asked me to summarize the principles of RealAge cooking on a card or foldover set of sheets they could carry in their breast pocket or purse for the first ninety days. The following 27 points are those principles, followed by a brief explanation of each.
Eating the RealAge Way
If you follow these practices, your food choices can make your RealAge fourteen years younger:
1. Make every calorie you eat delicious and nutrient-rich. Don’t eat foods that taste just “okay.” If they’re not special, don’t let them touch your lips. You deserve to treat yourself well.
2. Eat foods that aren’t processed. If you rarely eat packaged goods or prepared foods, you’ll usually know what’s in your food.
3. Eat breakfast—preferably, a whole grain and a little healthy fat. You’ll start the day off with energy, avoid hunger pangs that lead to unwise food choices, and have more stable blood sugar levels. Try real peanut butter on toasted rye or on a chewy whole wheat bagel, or a Kashi cereal.
4. Eat some healthy fat first at every meal. The ideal amount represents approximately 60–75 calories: ½ tablespoon of olive oil or canola oil, 6 walnuts, 12 almonds, 20 peanuts, or ½ ounce of cocoa-based chocolate or avocado.
5. Read the labels for serving size. Determine exactly how many servings you will be eating, and how many grams of saturated and trans fat that amount contains. Avoid products that put you over your daily limit of 20 grams, or that have more than 6 grams in a serving you’ll eat.
6. Read the labels for whole-grain content. Look at the first six items in the label. The first that involves grains should say “whole wheat,” “oats,” “oats, unprocessed,” “brown rice,” “corn,” etc. Choose products that have more whole-grain content than processed-grain content.
7. Tally your saturated and trans fat consumption every day. Try to keep it to less than 20 grams a day. No matter what the special interest lobbyists say, eating more than 20 grams a day of saturated and trans fat (we call these two together the “Aging Fats”; see earlier in this chapter) correlates with the development of arterial aging (heart disease, stroke, memory loss, impotence, decay in orgasm quality, wrinkling of the skin) and cancer (the evidence is strongest for increases in saturated and trans fats being associated with the development of breast and prostate cancers). And aging fats sap your energy acutely when they prevent your arteries from dilating as your muscles need more oxygen. The risk of arterial disease and cancer seems to increase substantially as your intake of saturated and trans fats combined exceeds 20 grams a day.
8. Limit red meat consumption to 4 ounces a week. This includes “the other white meat.” Use red meat as a side dish or condiment, not a main course.
9. Read the label when you buy baked goods. Choose those with whole grains, and no aging trans or saturated fats, and great texture. Baked goods tend to make you older because they contain tons of trans fats and processed flour. One Cinnabon, I’m told, contains 75 grams of aging fat—not a four-pack, but just one Cinnabon; a slice of whole-grain cinnamon-flavored bread made by our local Montana Bread Company or by P and C contains no aging or other fat and no processed flour, tastes great, and if you want to make it even healthier, add some peanut butter or pure avocado spread.
10. Substitute healthier foods. Assess your foods and meals in terms of how they could be made healthier by additions, subtractions, or substitutions. A few substitutions can make a big difference in your rate of aging. They also make food taste great! Try substituting olive oil for butter or margarine on bread, or prune purée or drained applesauce for 1 to 3 tablespoons of butter in smaller recipes; fruit for cookies; real (dark) chocolate for milk chocolate; nuts for chips; and cooked garlic salsa or marinara sauce for a cream sauce.
11. Make eating, and the place you eat, special. Only eat sitting down at one of your special places. (Usually, designate no more than three places as “special”—one at home and perhaps two at work). Only eat food on plates and on 9-inch plates, not giant ones. My most successful patients (and their families) have a special place in their home that is the only place for eating. Not eating anyplace else was and is their rule—not the TV room, not standing up, not in the car, not out of the refrigerator.
12. Take a 30-minute walk every day with a friend. I call this a RealAge double dip. Not only do you get the anti-aging benefit that physical activity and exercise give you, but also you build the strong social support networks that can help you prevent needless aging through times of stress.
13. Plan menus and learn to cook. Cooking can be a true pleasure; in addition, you will know what’s in your food, and you will also have the fun of learning how to use herbs and spices to make food taste fabulous.
14. Be a smart shopper. If you don’t buy food that’s bad for you, you won’t eat food that’s bad for you.
15. Eat nonfried fish three times a week. Any fish, not just fatty fish, makes you younger.
16. Eat 10 tablespoons of tomato sauce a week. Try marinara sauce, salsa, and other varieties. The carotenoid found in tomatoes, watermelon, guava, and pink grapefruit—lycopene—when eaten with a little oil, provides an immune-strengthening antioxidant that seems to inhibit growth of prostate, breast cancers, and maybe other cancers, and may make your arteries younger.
17. Add variety to your diet and the way you cook vegetables. Why is variety in your diet so important? Many people don’t eat a balanced diet. Forty percent of Americans don’t eat fruit daily, and 30 percent don’t consume any dairy or soy products regularly. On average, Americans get less than half of the 25 to 30 grams of fiber they need a day. Eating a diverse diet that is low in calories and high in nutrients decreases aging from arterial and immune dysfunction and makes your RealAge as much as four years younger. If you eat from all five food groups daily, you can be as much as five years younger than if you ate from only two. (The five groups are whole-grain breads and cereals; fruits; vegetables; dairy and dairy-substitute products; and meats, nuts, legumes, and other proteins). Adding variety to the way you cook is what you’ll learn when you read Chapter 5. And variety will make all vegetables taste better, great even. It makes more fun to try new ways of cooking—and that makes you younger.
18. Be the CEO every time you eat out—why should you pay for something that ages you? Learn to ask questions of the wait-staff when you eat out. Then learn to ask for healthy, great tasting choices—“Would you ask the chef to substitute the marinara sauce for the Alfredo sauce?”
19. Keep your portions energy-giving, not energy-sapping. The usual restaurant entrée is not an acceptable meal size. Use your fist or a pack of cards as a measure of a serving.
20. Stop eating as soon as you start to feel full. Because your stomach is roughly the size of your fist, eating meals larger than your fist can stretch your stomach beyond what’s comfortable or healthy. Eat a little healthy fat first. Then pause before the rest of the meal. And remember: stop eating as soon as you first sense you might be getting full—before the full feeling hits.
21. Don’t eat absentmindedly. All too often, eating is an unconscious act. We lift the fork, swallow absentmindedly, and lift the fork again. Sometimes we overeat because we just aren’t paying attention. We’re bored, nervous, or busy. Often, we’re not even hungry. Instead, eat mindfully. Be actively conscious of what you’re eating and why. Use all of your senses to enjoy the color, texture, smell, and flavor of your food. Not only will you enjoy your food more, but you’ll also slow down your rate of consumption.
22. Do resistance exercises for 10 minutes every other day. You replace a pound of your muscle with a pound of fat about every five years after age 35 if you do not do resistance exercises. And a pound of muscle uses about 150 calories a day, compared to 3 calories a day for a pound of fat. Whether you use free weights, resistance bands, or machines, it takes just 10 minutes three times a week to maintain muscle mass. (You can go to www.realage.com/realagecafé/myfitnessplan to see these resistance exercises and design a plan for yourself, but I recommend consultation with a trainer for at least the first three times you do resistance exercises and then at least once every three months thereafter.)
23. Be a savvy snacker. Think nutrient rich and calorie lean. Try a few nuts and a piece of whole fruit. Try not to snack at night.
24. Avoid simple carbohydrates and simple sugars. Remember that carbohydrates were meant to be complex. Simple sugars in food are absorbed quickly in the intestine and increase the amount of sugar in the blood for at least one to two hours. A high concentration of sugar in the blood eradicates the natural protective control your body has over the usual, everyday variations in blood pressure. High blood-sugar levels also increase triglyceride levels in the blood.
What about honey and natural sugars? Unfortunately, these are not healthy substitutes for white sugar. So avoid foods that are laden with carbohydrates from brown sugar, corn sweetener, dextrose, fructose (high fructose corn sweetener), glucose, corn syrup, honey, invert sugar, lactose, maltose, malt syrup, molasses, raw sugar, sucrose, syrup, and table sugar.
25. Drink alcohol in moderation. Women benefit from one drink a day; men, from one or two. Avoid making this choice if you or your family are at risk of alcohol or drug abuse.
26. Drink lots of water. Drink a glass of water between every glass of wine or other alcoholic drink you have. Also, at food events, carry a glass of water in one hand.
27. Take the right vitamins and minerals twice a day and avoid the wrong ones.
See Chapter 12 of this book to find what vitamins you should consider taking and in what amounts.
RealAge Kitchen Recipes
Included in this book are delicious RealAge recipes I know you’ll enjoy. Each recipe carries with it a RealAge effect. I tell you how much younger (or older) enjoying each recipe twelve times a year will make you. For example, enjoying Barbecued Red Snapper with Spicy Red Beans and Rice twelve times a year will make you 11.4 days younger. Although these calculations are approximations, they clearly provide a direction and magnitude of health effect for each recipe. In addition, each recipe was selected for great taste and ease of preparation, and all were tested repeatedly by several amateur and professional chefs for ease of cooking and for taste ratings from multiple audiences. Think of these recipes, and of your new, healthy lifestyle, as a giant menu of possibilities: a menu of choices for growing younger and staying young. Think of it as a menu for a lifetime—a long and healthy lifetime—of great-tasting foods.
In Cooking the RealAge Way I also address simple cooking and healthy eating as a joyful lifestyle, full of the pleasures of creative cooking; the blessing of sharing sensuous, delicious foods and a glass of fine wine with loved ones; and the relief and relaxation of stress-free time spent in a well-stocked, well-equipped kitchen.