texture. In burgeoning, ultramodern cities, at the base of towering glass buildings around the world, farmers markets still sell the quality, local ingredients pulled from the earth or fished from the rivers and lakes that morning. My point is not to suggest that America isn’t a wonderful country with our own rich history of cuisine. My point is that we’re out of touch with our roots. That disconnection is the biggest reason why we have bookshelves full of conflicting nutritional advice. It’s also why, though many of us still have good genes, we have not maintained them very well. Like plump grapes left to bake on a French hillside, American chromosomes are wilting on the vine. They can be revitalized simply by enjoying the delightful products of traditional cuisine.
The messy amalgamation of vastly different dishes comprising every authentic cuisine can be cleaved into four neat categories, which I call the Four Pillars of World Cuisine. We need to eat them as often as we can, preferably daily. They are:
1. Meat cooked on the bone
2. Organs and offal (what Bourdain calls “the nasty bits”) 3. Fresh (raw) plant and animal products
4. Fermented and sprouted foods—better than fresh!
These categories have proved to be essential by virtue of their ubiquitousness. In almost every country other than ours people eat them every day. They’ve proved to be successful by virtue of their practitioners’ health and survival. Like cream rising in a glass, these traditions have percolated upward from the past, buoyed by their intrinsic value. They have endured the test of time simply by being delicious and nutritious, and in celebrating them we can reconnect with our roots and with each other, and bring our lives toward their full potential.
or biochemistry) cultures everywhere survived based on living in accordance with the cause and effect realities of their daily experience. If someone ate a certain red berry and got sick, berries from that bush would be forbidden. If a mother developed a strong craving for a specific mushroom or kind of seafood or what-have-you during her pregnancy and went on to enjoy a particularly smooth and easy delivery of a healthy baby, then this association would be added to the growing body of collective wisdom. Their successes are now memorialized in our existence and in the healthy genetic material we have managed to retain. Solutions to the all-important omnivore’s dilemma—the question of what we should be eating—are all around us, encapsulated in traditions still practiced by foodies, culinary artists, devoted grandmothers, and chefs throughout the world, some in your very own neighborhood. Unfortunately, this wisdom has gone unappreciated, thanks to the cholesterol theory of heart disease and other byproducts of what Michael Pollan calls “scientific reductionism” (a decidedly unscientific exercise, as Pollan explains in his popular book, In Defense of Food).18
Fortunately, those who love—really love—good cooking and good food have kept culinary traditions alive. In doing so, not only have their own families benefited, they also serve as the modern emissaries of our distant relatives, carriers of an ancient secret once intended to be shared only with members of the tribe. Today, we are that tribe. And that message—how to use food to stay healthy and beautiful—is the most precious gift we could possibly receive.
Throughout this book I will highlight the power of food to shape your daily life. In fact, every bite you eat changes your genes a little bit.
Just as the genetic lottery follows a set of predictable rules, so do the small changes that occur after every meal. If the machinery of physiologic change is not random, and is instead guided by rules, then who—or what—keeps track of them? In the next chapter, we’ll see how the gene responds to nourishment with what can best be described as intelligence, and why this built-in ability makes me certain that many of us have untapped genetic potential waiting to be released.
CHAPTER 2 The Intelligent Gene
Epigenetics and the Language of DNA
“Good genes” make us healthy, strong, and beautiful and represent a kind of family fortune we call genetic wealth.
We hear all the time that harmful gene mutations that cause disease are random, but the latest science suggests that’s not always true.
We don’t need to wait for technology to synthesize disease-free genes or designer babies.
Simply by giving our genes the nutrients they’ve come to expect, we can accomplish a lot, with zero risk.
Reorienting our financial priorities around healthy eating rebuilds our family’s genetic wealth and is the best investment we can make.
I remember getting caught up in the excitement when Halle Berry took the stage at the 2002 Oscars, how she stood before the audience and tearfully thanked God for her blessings. “Thank you. I’m so honored. I’m so honored. And I thank the Academy for choosing me to be the vessel for which His blessing might flow. Thank you.” A laudable Hollywood milestone, Berry was the first woman of African-American descent to be awarded the Oscar for a leading role. While so much focus was placed on what made this actor, and that evening, unique in the history of Hollywood movies, I couldn’t avoid the nagging feeling that there was something familiar about the woman in her stunning gown, something about her face that reminded me of every other woman who had, over the years, clutched the little golden statue in her hands. What was the link between Ms. Berry and all her Academy-honored sisters like Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett, Angelina Jolie, Julia Roberts, Kim Basinger, Jessica Lange, Elizabeth Taylor, Ingrid Bergman,
and the rest? Yes, they are all talented masters of their craft. But there was something else about them, something more obvious, maybe so obvious that it was one of those things you just learn to take for granted.
Then it occurred to me: They are all breathtakingly gorgeous.
Like Halle Berry, we are all vessels—not necessarily designed to win Oscars—but made to eat, survive, and reproduce genetic material. So if you happen to win an Oscar, you could make history by extending one last note of gratitude to your extraordinary DNA. When your PR agent chastises you the next morning, just explain to her that we are all active participants in one of the oldest and most profound relationships on our planet—between our bodies and our DNA, and the food that connects both to the outside world. Halle Berry’s perfectly proportioned, fit, healthy body is evidence of a happy relationship between her genes and the natural environment, one that has remained so for several generations. As this chapter will explain, if you hope to create a more fruitful relationship with your own genes, to get healthier and improve the way you look, you need to learn to work with the intelligence embedded within your DNA.