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Cooking the RealAge Way

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.

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.

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.

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."

Copyright © 2003 by Michael F. Roizen, M.D., and RealAge, Inc.