One of the great treats of cooking RealAge-smart is to use local produce. Farm-fresh food tastes better than the more traveled variety. So, getting the best to and from your RealAge meals means using local produce. However, local produce varies by the season. Knowing what is harvested in each season can help you choose the freshest ingredients for the healthiest, most fabulous-tasting dishes.
RealAge cooks tailor their meals to what’s in season in their area. Foods that are in season are at the peak of flavor, they’re the least expensive, and they need the least cooking. Let your garden or a trip to a farmers’ market be your inspiration for your meals. Pick the ripest fruit, the crispest vegetables, and the most aromatic herbs; then, let the food speak for itself. To please your eye, mix bright colors. “Food joy” engages all the senses: food should not only look, smell, and taste good but even sound and feel good.
Do you want to cook by the seasons but aren’t sure when foods are at their prime? Or what to do with them once you have them? This chapter provides this information. While foods are harvested at different times in different regions of the country, the following list shows the usual peak season for fruits and vegetables; we bring some large regional differences to your attention. Within each season, we’ve provided groups of recipes that utilize the respective seasonal foods to make you younger. Your Kitchen IQ increases by 10 points if you always or almost always use seasonal fruit, vegetables, and herbs.
RealAge Kitchen Recipes
Included in this book are delicious RealAge recipes we know you’ll enjoy. Think of them, and of your new, healthy lifestyle, as a giant menu of possibilities: choices for growing younger and staying young. They’ve been tested for taste and require less than 30 minutes to prepare, start to finish. It’s a menu for a lifetime—a long and healthy lifetime—of great-tasting foods.
Each recipe in this book carries with it a RealAge effect. We tell you how much younger or older enjoying this 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.
The recipes are organized by (1) ingredients that are likely to be at peak flavor in season; and (2) by meal—but do not feel limited by the suggested meal. If you want to start with dessert, feel free to do so. If you want a breakfast meal for lunch or a dinner for lunch, feel free to enjoy it. And do not be limited by the choice of seasons.
Calculating the RealAge Effect of a Recipe
Calculation of the RealAge effect of each recipe is complex in math but straightforward in concept. We already know in detail what each nutrient does to your RealAge. The results of those calculations are provided in the first two RealAge books for each age and gender group, and on the Web site www.RealAge.com. Here’s a short summary of a sample calculation of how a recipe affects your RealAge.
We know that consuming 10 tablespoons of tomato sauce a week makes the average 55-year-old man 1.9 years younger. Therefore, if a recipe calls for 3 tablespoons of tomato sauce per serving, each serving provides 30 percent of the weekly benefit. For our purposes in calculating a RealAge benefit, we assume that one serving of the recipe will be consumed twelve times a year. Thus, the 55-year-old man would receive 12/52nds of the benefit derived from 30 percent of the 1.9 year benefit. In addition, for accuracy’s sake, we have to adjust the calculations to take into consideration certain mathematical factors—covariance and interactions. Specifically, in our example, the figure of 1.9 years assumes that our man eats an average amount of all the other nutrients that the average American eats. But no one eats this “average” amount. So we assumed, in our calculations, what is known as “the least effect.” That is, we have assumed that our man was already eating an ideal diet except for the nutrients in our recipe. This factor is called a covariance factor and is, in our example, 0.25. Combining all of these elements, we compute the RealAge effect of our dish as follows: 12/52 × 0.3 × 1.9 years × 365 days per year × 0.25, or 12 days younger! Because each of the recipes contains many ingredients, the mathematics become complex. Nevertheless, the concept is straightforward.
In addition, each recipe was selected for great taste and ease of preparation. All were tested repeatedly by several amateur as well as professional chefs and rated on a scale from 1 to 10. For inclusion in the book, a recipe had to receive a rating of at least 8 (scale shown below) from many different samplings and audiences, rendered by professionally trained chefs and home cooks alike.
The Rating Scale for the RealAge Recipes
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Based on Taste, Color, and Texture |
Rating |
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I wouldn’t feed this to anyone. |
0 |
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I wouldn’t make this again. |
6 |
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I’d make this again. |
8 |
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This is almost as good as great sex. |
10 |