Cooking the RealAge Way
Turn Back Your Biological Clock with More Than 80 Delicious Recipes
By Michael F. Roizen and John La Puma, M.D.

     Dr. Phil does a special about it. Jay Leno makes jokes about it. Americans are obese and, judging from Michael F. Roizen and Dr. John La Puma’s latest entry in the RealAge (www.realage.com) book phenomenon, making ourselves older and less energetic, even with those McDonald’s salads. Our ailing, burned-out population is a healthcare disaster.

     Roizen and La Puma, as well as Suzanne Somers, make the argument that we aren’t born to reach for a Ding Dong or Lean Cuisine as dinner at the end of the day. Just consider Sophia Loren. Do you know why she looks so fabulous? In part, it’s all that marinara sauce, cooked naturally in a well-stocked kitchen (Roizen and La Puma, too, apparently have a culinary arsenal that would make Martha Stewart blush) and eaten with friends and family in the boisterous Italian tradition of family and special places for eating (which also knocks years off your RealAge). Eating 10 tablespoons of tomato sauce per week, rich in the new hot ingredient, lycopene, makes your RealAge 1.9 years younger (55-year-old male) or 0.7 years younger (55-year-old female)—Mamma Mia! Add savory herbs such as fennel and oregano instead of fat, and if you grow them yourself, that makes you younger. You might even get the kids away from the computer and TV. Roizen and La Puma make the argument that a generation of children has grown up thinking that peas and corn come from the grocer’s freezer. We all complain about the environment, and according to Roizen and La Puma, one of the best things we can do to turn back our planet’s RealAge is pile the kids in an SUV and head to a farmer’s market for fresh locally-grown produce. And if you’re an adult male of 55, buy some nuts and eat an ounce a day (3.3 years off your RealAge.)

     This is no Big Mac read. Roizen and La Puma’s cornucopia of information and age-defying recipes with detailed nutritional analysis and RealAge benefits in this book are a rich delicious gourmet feast, like the Multi-Mushroom Risotto (page 257), to be slowly savored.