Ray Kurzweil describes a plan to live forever in his book, Fantastic Voyage. (There is a lot of information available for free (including lots of book excerpts) on the Fantastic Voyage web site.)
The basic plan is straightforward: eat right (food and supplementation) and treat yourself right (mental and physical health) so you are biologically young enough to take advantage of new life extension technologies as they come out.
I have summarized Kurzweil’s diet recommendations at the end of this article. And you can find the details in A Short Guide to a Long Life.
Whole Foods is the best grocery store on the planet. It is way expensive but the alternative is to spend your time visiting two, three, or more grocery stores to find all of the things you can get at Whole Foods. And Whole Foods makes grocery shopping fun — I find their stores to be pleasant and relaxing. They have published standards for what they will sell and they carry absolutely no “artificial preservatives, colors, flavors, sweeteners, and hydrogenated oils” or any of these other “ingredients”. I am obviously not the only person in the world who shops at Whole Foods because their stock is kicking ass.
[Begin Rant] The mass food industry (”big food”?) is probably one of the biggest unchallenged scams in the world. Just because Kraft, Safe-Way, or Coca-Cola sell you something and call it “food” does not make it so. It might feel good (so does crack cocaine) but don’t call it “food”. [End Rant]
Here’s the diet summary I promised. Kurzweil’s diet recommendations are impossible to follow exactly. But eating 10% healthier is a lot better than eating 0% healthier. So I do what I can and my diet vacillates between ascetic and suicidal. And it might cost you $50 more each time you go to the grocery store, but isn’t it worth $1000/year to spend many more years with your children, spouse, and loved ones?
Embrace:
Organic everything
Free-range, anti-biotic-free, and hormone-free everything
Whole, unprocessed foods
Lots of vegetables
Low glycemic load fruit (e.g. berries)
Lean Protein (e.g. turkey, tofu, wild salmon in moderation (try Vital Choice), egg whites)
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Omega-3 fats (e.g. flaxseed oil)
Green tea (I order from Upton Tea)
Stevia (a natural sugar substitute)
Clean water
Exercise
Avoid:
Sugar
High glycemic loads (food with a lot of simple carbohydrates)
Bread
Fruit Juice (this is mostly flavored sugar)
Saturated fats found in animal products (e.g. whole milk, butter, animal fat)
Hydrogenated fats (these are also known as trans-fats and there is no acceptable amount of them in your diet — avoid them like the plague)
Red Meat
Any animal product that is not free-range, antibiotic-free, and hormone-free
Coffee
Soft Drinks
Preservatives
Anything “artificial”
Salt
Processed food
Frying
Update: Those of you in Palo Alto can get a weekly healthy macrobiotic meal for $13 from the Peninsula Macrobiotic Community.
i look at that list and see i sit deeply in the second lower list….maybe i will live shorter but the pleasure i get from eating meat and dairy is worth it. mmmm.
my girlfriend is trying to slip fresh fruit into my diet once a day, so some sort of health option is being slid in there.
james
hi nivi,
i love reading anything where someone is spreading the word about organics. i have been eating, almost exclusively, organically for over 20 years.
have you ever read/seen the book, The China Study by T Colin Cambell. check it out.
thanks for mentioning the monday night meals.
Nivi,
You rock. From Web 2.0 to Lifestyle 2.0, I’m always finding something insightful here.
Hey. I am mostly in agreement with you on the diet, though I would add–if you can eat it raw, you’re better off nutritionally. I do have a big issue however about including “tofu” and its highly processed and unfermented related foods in the category of lean proteins. There’s a lot of history and science to show that the soybean is not healthy for human consumption (unless fermented) and there might be very serious consequences to its mass consumption. Check out these sites, if you are interested in learning more, or at least, in engaging a presumption in the health community–that soy is a cheap and nonviolent form of protein.
http://www.soyonlineservice.co.nz/ http://www.mercola.com
By the way, I used to get a lot of people to rethink soy, especially tofu, in their diet when I shared with them the fact that Buddhist monks used to eat tofu to control their libido.
I agree that there are some concerns with excessive tofu consumption. The reason I like Kurzweil is because he takes a clean-sheet engineering approach to his diet and he is a scientist.
I am not sold on raw but I agree that most things are probably cooked past the point of optimal health. My guess is the best preparation for fruits and vegetables is to steam them very quickly and lightly.
Stevia? Its banned in the US, Canada, and the E.U. because there simply aren’t enough studies to prove it doesn’t harm you. I don’t care if Japan has been using it fine since the 70’s… they also eat that puffer fish that has to be prepared by a specially certified chef else it will kill you with a bite the size of a quarter. (sorry for the tangent) Sugar is fine, just don’t shovel it into everything you eat!
Bread – you don’t mean whole wheat bread right? White bread is sugar garbage but anything with the whole grain case is another bonus way to get the most important nutrients in your diet.
Salt is obviously necessary for life but there’s so much salt in our current “food” choices that NOBODY needs table salt (except to avoid goiters!) Salt is not bad, but salinating your bloodstream is not a healthy choice.
Totally agree with everything artifical… but honestly , wackos like Kurzweil just freak people out. He’s got mostly healthy recommendations with some bogus stuff in there to get PR. At least people will start thinking about what they put in their mouths again – at least until the next diet fad will come out. Try reading Willett for rational nutrition advice that doesn’t make you rearrange your life.
Notice that Kurzweil was promoting a very low fat, high carb diet in the 90s with his book, The 10% Solution, which was backed by tons of scientific references. He now has inexplicably switched to a low-carb, low-fat diet. Given the negative comments he made about high-protein diets in his previous book and the bullet-proof studies referenced for high-carb, low-fat diets, we certainly are owed an explanation! I did send a friendly email, but I have not received a reply. Does anyone have an explanation??
Yes, Dave, unfortunately I do. Ray Kurzweil is a fad-rider. He has ‘acquired’ almost every idea he has published for the last 15 years from someone else. I wish that weren’t true, as Ray is a ‘family’ member of sorts, and is actually quite a decent fellow. And – at least for the first several decades of his life – a legitimately brilliant inventor.
But for example, a large part of what he has spent the last several years presenting as his own theses (in a manner just on the legal side of plagiarism) is what the transhuman/extropian folks were writing about in the mid 80s. His ideas on diet and nutrition have been likewise mined from other sources and then referenced to appear self-researched.
Perhaps he has so fully embraced and internalized these ideas that he does not realize that what he is presenting are not thoughts original to himself. Perhaps he feels (financial/social) pressure to ‘mine’ these ideas to reinforce his public persona as an inventor and innovator. Or maybe his editors/handlers think that his books wouldn’t have as much cache if he presented as a ‘mere’ popularizer.
But I do know that for the last decade or more, if Ray is writing about something then someone has probably already done so somewhere else. He presents as an edge-rider but actually he’s well behind the curl.
Aubrey de Grey is doing some amazing things right now. If your interested in living forever and finding a cure for aging I suggest checking out his website. Find out how you can help.
http://www.sens.org/how.htm
I’ve even decided to go back to school to get a BS in biology.
Maybe I need to go back to school and learn proper grammer as well. your should be you’re.
I agree that there are some concerns with excessive tofu consumption. The reason I like Kurzweil is because he takes a clean-sheet engineering approach to his diet and he is a scientist.
I am not sold on raw but I agree that most things are probably cooked past the point of optimal health. My guess is the best preparation for fruits and vegetables is to steam them very quickly and lightly.
I totally agree
To understand what is of us you need to open your evez and listen…Iam 21 male and will live forever until Iam ready to go…..The ideas I have are very real. To success this will cost billons, but will make trillions. I need the help of my self first to further my studies of forever life before I get sponsers. You will see way before a 100 years in this life time it will happen………Good day.
As scientists race to unlock the secrets of aging, the once esoteric quest for immortality has suddenly gone mainstream. But are human beings actually ready to step into the uncharted waters of everlasting life? WIE investigates the promises and perils of the emerging technology of radical life extension.