Eating to live longer: It can be a page turner

Maroon also strongly advocates resveratrol supplements and "resveratrol-like" prescription drugs (none of the latter is on the market yet). But his confident and enthusiastic endorsement of resveratrol is based on research conducted mostly on animals and in test tubes. Relatively little human research has been performed to date. Though existing research suggests the chemical may improve cardiovascular health, none has yet shown it helps prolong life in people.

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The Younger (Thinner) You Diet

How Understanding Your Brain Chemistry Can Help You Lose Weight, Reverse Aging, and Fight Disease

Eric Braverman

Rodale, 2009

The "Younger (Thinner) You Diet" is based on the premise that body weight and aging are tightly bound. "Your excess weight is your aging brain's cry for help," writes Dr. Braverman, who runs a private practice (the Place for Achieving Total Health, or PATH) in New York and is clinical professor of integrative medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College. The aging brain he describes is characterized by low levels of the key nerve cell-signaling chemicals dopamine, acetylcholine, GABA and serotonin, deficiencies he asserts can be remedied with the right foods.

The book is packed with meal plans, shopping lists and recipes for boosting blood chemicals: acetylcholine-boosting frittata, dopamine-boosting scrambled eggs, GABA-boosting salad, serotonin-boosting tofu and total-brain-chemical-boosting lamb tagine. The dishes don't include the chemicals themselves but the building blocks needed to make them, such as the amino acids phenylalanine and tyrosine, precursors to dopamine; and choline, the B vitamin from which acetylcholine is made.

Braverman also provides advice on how to reverse what he refers to as the "pauses," the physiological changes associated with the aging of the body's organs. To make an aging heart younger, he recommends low-sodium, high-fiber foods, complex carbohydrates and foods that provide omega-3 fats. For osteopause he advises foods rich in calcium; for menopause, foods high in vitamin D.

Overall, Braverman recommends a high-protein, high-fiber, low-fat diet packed with foods rich in vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. He prescribes tea, spices with every meal, yogurt and whole grains.

This is all fairly sound dietary advice, but the justifications are sometimes slim: He promotes nutmeg as an antidepressant, for example, although the only evidence for the claim comes from a single study in mice.