The man who told you to eat fat to lose weight now has the secret to eternal youth.
Longevity expert and functional medicine guru Dr. Mark Hyman released his latest magnum opus this month, “The Young Forever Cookbook,” a companion cookbook to last year’s best-selling health guide, “Young Forever.”
The director of the UltraWellness Center believes aging is a preventable disease, and “Young Forever” is a blueprint for staying disease-free and cognitively sharp into your golden years.
Hyman’s recipe for anti-aging is all about choosing the right ingredients to keep your body and soul young from middle age through old age.
“The book is essentially a manual for living to 100 and staying healthy into old age,” Cleveland Clinic’s Hyman told The Post. “It has nutritional advice, but I wanted to create a cookbook that brings it all together and that people can use at home.”
While the New York resident, who has lived in Pittsfield, Massachusetts for 30 years, can’t guarantee that anyone will live to that incredible age, he has developed a recipe that “optimizes all the right ingredients to create pathways of longevity in the body.”
The cookbook features 100 recipes and includes delicious dishes like Roasted Red Pepper and Zucchini Frittata and Thai Turkey. Raab (Ground Beef) Lettuce Wraps and Coconut Crumble with Rhubarb and Strawberries mean that being healthy doesn’t seem like torture.
Even more good news: The principles in Hyman’s “Young Forever” overlap with those in the 2016 book “The Eat Fat, Get Thin Cookbook,” meaning losing weight, increasing energy, and even extending your life may all be possible.
And then there’s vanity: “Reducing disease-causing inflammation also contributes to a more youthful appearance,” says Hyman, a spry 64-year-old. “You’ll see better skin tone and fewer wrinkles.”
Hyman said the secret is to adopt an anti-inflammatory, nutritious pegan diet. a little bit It’s a combination of vegan and paleo diets, a plant-based diet rich in high-quality clean proteins, colorful vegetables and fruits, seeds, nuts and whole grains.
“These are foods that are high in omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants,” Hyman says. “The goal is to maintain hormone balance and mitochondrial health.”
Many chemicals, including PFAS, found in processed foods and plastic packaging are known hormone disruptors, affecting everything from mood to weight gain and reduced energy levels.
Mitochondria live inside the cells of every living organism and produce adenosine triphosphate, also known as ATP, to provide the energy every cell needs to function and survive. Mitochondria are also essential for healthy aging because they process unstable molecules called free radicals that can cause inflammation, cancer and even cell death.
Nearly a century of industrial food production has led to nutrient-free convenience foods that have made disease and unhealthy aging commonplace, but Hyman says some of this is avoidable.
“It’s convenient in the short term, but inconvenient when that diet leads to doctor’s visits and lifelong medication,” Hyman said. “Processing is inevitable. You might use canned tomatoes every now and then. Yogurt is processed. Even cooking is a form of processing.”
Instead, Hyman advised people to avoid “ultra-processed foods, which are produced in factories and offer no health benefits”, saying they “have created the modern dilemma of overeating and undernutrition”.
“It’s very clear: If you change what you have in your pantry, you change the way you eat,” Hyman said.
“Good habits start at home, and if you don’t have good habits, when times get stressful or your willpower is low, you’re not going to put harmful foods into your body,” Hyman advises.
“Once you know how to do it, it’s easy and the benefits are huge.”
Here, Hyman shared with The Washington Post a recipe for a “super simple yet satisfying salad” using smoked mackerel that she says is “packed with vitamins B12 and D, as well as iodine, which helps regulate thyroid hormones.”
Smoked mackerel summer tomato salad
Serves 4.Preparation time: 10 minutes
- 1 shallot, thinly sliced
- 2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- 1.5 pounds mixed heirloom and cherry tomatoes, cut into small pieces or halved
- 1 can (14 ounces) artichoke hearts, drained and quartered
- 2 tablespoons capers (drained)
- ¼ cup chopped fresh dill, plus more for garnish
- 6 ounces smoked mackerel fillet
- 2 tablespoons toasted pine nuts
- Freshly ground black pepper, for serving
- In a small bowl, toss the shallots and sherry vinegar for 10 minutes. Stir in the olive oil and add salt to taste.
- In a large bowl, mix the tomatoes, artichokes, capers and dill. Remove the shallots from the vinaigrette and add to the salad, tossing to combine. Top with the mackerel fillets. Drizzle with the reserved vinaigrette and garnish with the toasted pine nuts, ground black pepper and dill.
- Tip: Always keep tomatoes at room temperature. Tomatoes contain enzymes that react to the cold and will make them soft and mealy, so room temperature will give you the best texture.
Excerpted from The Young Forever Cookbook by Mark Hyman, M.D. Copyright © 2024 Hyman Enterprises, LLC. Photography by Kayla Zanardi. Used with permission from Little, Brown Spark, a publication of Little, Brown and Company. New York, NY. All rights reserved.
