Product Description

Food Can Make You Younger!Dr. Michael Roizen presents his program for eating the RealAge way: a diet that is good for your overall health, plus works to delay or even reverse aging. If there's one thing you will learn from this book, it's that no matter who you are, if you eat foods that are high in nutrients and low in calories you will be on the road to renewed health and vitality.

The RealAge Diet Shows You How To:

• Use foods to regain the energy of your youth
• Eat nutritiously while still enjoying delicious food choices
• Choose the right vitamins and supplements to keep you young
• Modify various popular weight-loss diets to maximize their age-reducing benefits
• Read between the lines of restaurant menus to find the most healthful options
• Make your RealAge younger with every bite

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15193 in Books
• Published on: 2002-06-01
• Released on: 2002-06-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780060086121
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Roizen, a physician and author of the bestselling RealAge: Are You as Young as You Can Be?, teams up with La Puma, also a physician and a professionally trained chef, to offer a new approach to eating based on the premise that, by making even small changes (e.g., starting every dinner with an ounce of nuts), we can become biologically younger than our chronological age (e.g., Roizen is 55 years old but has calculated his "RealAge" to be 38). Roizen and La Puma begin with a variety of quizzes so readers can assess their current diet and determine where they need to make changes. While many of the self-assessment tests are in the book, the authors frequently refer readers to their Web site for more detailed quizzes and additional nutritional information, which limits the book's value. On the other hand, this work does an excellent job of analyzing specific foods and explaining their benefits or risks to readers. Less appealing and comprising a large section of the book is the analysis of other well-known diet programs (e.g., the Atkins diet, the Carbohydrate Addicts diet, the Zone) and how to modify them using the RealAge principles. Although there is a reassuring validity to Roizen and La Puma's criticisms, readers may also find them somewhat smug. Overall, though, the RealAge diet is a refreshing and accessible approach to an age-old problem. (May)Forecast: Given the huge success of RealAge, readers' continual concern with dieting (particularly in pre-bathing-suit season) and a five-city author tour, this book should reach bestseller status.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Michael Roizen, M.D., is an internist who chairs the Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care at the University of Chicago. He has been listed in The Best Doctors in America for the last twelve years. He is the author of the number one New York Times bestseller RealAge. Dr. Roizen lives in Chicago, Illinois.

John La Puma, M.D., is board-certified in internal medicine and is also a professionally trained chef. Formerly a Professor of Nutrition at Kendall College and an Associate Professor at the University of Chicago, he is Medical Director of the Santa Barbara Institute for Medical Nutrition and Healthy Weight. He also founded the KneeLife Eating Plan aimed at helping people with osteoarthritis pain use food as medicine without having to lose weight.

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Customer Reviews

science and common sense come together
This is an excellent book which educates the reader on nutrition, which lets one make informed decisions on healthy eating. What is most important is that the focus of the book is on the enjoyment of food, choosing foods which are healthy and fun.

The chapter looking at other popular diets is going to be the most controversial, as some well-established diets are, by Dr. Roizen's calculations, very unhealthy. This makes sense to me: a diet which is highly restrictive can't be healthy in the long term.

The chapter on how to make healthy food choices while at restaurants has been the most helpful for me - I have already started ordering dishes which aren't on the menu, and been very pleased with the results.

This is a great book, firmly based in science, which will make you eat healthier, and enjoy food more, if you follow its advice.

Useful Applications of Research on Food and Health
The connection between food and health is a strong one. Many diet-obsessed people overly focus on this one element of health though. This book builds from the RealAge research to help you change your eating habits in permanent, healthy ways. The book's weakness is that the recommended solutions require a lot of discipline to get started.

The book's conclusion that these changes will make you physiologically younger may well be a stretch. "To be honest, there's still a lot that scientists don't know about nutrition." That sentence is the most important one in the book. A new diet could be produced every year incorporating the latest research results, and each one would be different. I suspect that this continuing change in perceptions will go on for decades. So I suggest that you not take the results of any one diet book too seriously. Some of the key conclusions of each one will probably be contradicted in the future.

Nevertheless, this book is an attempt to point you toward eating habits that reduce diseases older people get more frequently and extend longevity. On the other hand, this book does not focus on appearance or weight level. Many people who read diet books are more interested in those two areas than longevity. If you are interested in another diet currently, this book probably reviews the other diet and gives you a rating for whether or not that diet will help extend longevity. The book is most positive about Eating Well for Optimum Health and Dean Ornish's Eat More, Weigh Less. The book's advice can be encapsulated as "Eat nutrient rich, calorie poor, and delicious." These foods include fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean meats, fish, and the right fats (eaten in moderation early in the meal). If you are familiar with books about nutrition, you won't find any big "'aha's" here. The main news is that eating fish seems to have benefits separate from eating the fats that are in fish. Now, I find that I feel a lot better if I eat fish 2 or 3 times a week. I suspect that listening to your body is often as reliable as the latest evidence.

Like many of the best books about nutrition and Sugarbusters!, this one warns about paying attention to glycemic levels of foods.

I did find its focus on calorie count to be questionable. The weight set-point for people differs a lot, and some people with slow metabolisms may find this approach just another painful way to be overweight. Calories do count, but picking your target is hard to do well. Spending a lot of time measuring calories will reduce consumption. If you have a high metabolism, the effort may well bring weight-loss rewards worth the effort.

The scientific references in the back of the book are impressive, but are not well connected to the text. You would have to do a lot of reading to find out what the research really says. I would like to have seen a closer connection between the footnotes and the text. Both Eating Well for Optimum Health and Live Right 4 Your Type are better in this area.

A clear conflict exists between this book and Live Right 4 Your Type. Both seem to be equally based on scientific research, except that Live Right 4 Your Type attempts to match the advice for your blood type. This book discusses the earlier book, Eat Right 4 Your Type, which does not closely match to research references. Based on my own experiences with both the average and the blood type adjusted approaches, I think the Live Right 4 Your Type method works better for me than the RealAge Diet.

If you have heart disease, you will have to modify some of those diets to reflect that by reducing fat (see Dean Ornish's Reversing Heart Disease).

If you are well read on nutrition, this book will not add much to your knowledge. If you eat poorly and have not read about nutrition, this is a fine book for you.

I would like to commend the section in the book on eating out. There are many good ideas for how to have your food prepared in healthier ways. Even if you know nutrition, you may find the book to be a valuable asset for this reason if you are passive in restaurants.

The book also advises doing a lot of your own cooking. That's not for me. The recipes looked too hard to me to be worth looking into. You may have a different reaction. If you do, enjoy!

After you read this book, you should also think about how much effort it is worth to extend your lifespan. If you spend 10 percent of your waking hours to expand your life by five percent, is that an accomplishment? Depending on how you spend your time, it may or may not be. For example, if you live enough longer than a cure comes along that extends your life by another 10 percent, you're ahead. If you enjoy working on this, you are ahead also. If you have more energy to give to others, you may be ahead also.

Also, you might want to check out Dean Ornish's Love and Survival where he points out that human relationships have more impact on disease and health than diet.

Make food a positive part of your life!

Best diet book on the market.
I love the RealAge diet. What I like best is that Dr. Roizen explains WHY you should eat certain foods and avoid others. Since he helps you to understand the effect different foods have on your body, you can learn to make good choices at the supermarket or restaurant instead of having to memorize a food list. I have lost five pounds since going on this diet a month ago, but even more importantly, my energy level has gone way up. I have given this book as a gift to both my grown children.