Dean's Current Diet

[Dean Pomerleau]

Tasbin,

 

What is the actual daily costs of your diet?

 

I knew someone would ask me that. It's really hard to say, since it varies a lot depending on the season (e.g. how much of my food I'm getting from my own garden and my CSA). It is also hard to figure out because I buy in bulk from so many different sources, and since my wife pays our credit card bills ☺. But if I had to ballpark it, I'd say the meal shown above costs between $20-30 per day. The most expensive item? Easy. The durian, at about $4/day, he says with a twinge of guilt...

 

--Dean

[TomBAvoider]

What can one say - it's stellar. I mean, there are all sorts of things one could discuss, but even if one were to claim that some of the choices are suboptimal, such considerations would be overwhelmed by the healthfulness of the overall diet. I mean, even if one were to tweak this to perfection, I seriously doubt you'd increase your LS by a single day or get any more health benefits than you already are extracting. But, since we are in it as much for the fun and science as the actual results, I'll throw one out there, in the spirit of fun: ripe bananas? I mean, aren't bananas sort of sub-optimal food anyway - nothing particularly unique about the micronutrients it delivers, or phytonutrients, all at a substantial caloric cost/buck for its meager bang. There are much better fruit out there. And to tweak at even slimmer margins - ripe? I mean, from a starch/glucose POV, if those bananas were at least unripe or not fully ripe... instead, ripe! Disclaimer: I don't believe substituting something else for those bananas would actually make a real world difference to your health outcomes given the totality of your diet; if those ripe bananas were the only fruit you consumed, one might make an argument, but as it stands, it's completely moot.

[Dean Pomerleau]

Hi Tom!

 

I'll throw one out there, in the spirit of fun: ripe bananas? I mean, aren't bananas sort of sub-optimal food anyway - nothing particularly unique about the micronutrients it delivers, or phytonutrients, all at a substantial caloric cost/buck for its meager bang.

 

You are absolutely right. Bananas are by no means a nutrition superstar. I eat them (ripe even!) because I enjoy the taste. They are my dessert, along with the durian. They (metaphorically) represent the 'ballast' in my diet, to be modulated up/down depending on whether I'm intending to gain or lose weight, and depending on how much physical activity I'm getting.

 

--Dean

[mikeccolella]

Hi Dean and thanks for the diet post. I do recall Michael Rae warning regarding strawberries and pesticides. They are also listed on the dirty dozen list. I eat them only organic. I do recall your post on evidence that pesticides are not really a problem. So Am I right that your not concerned about strawberries and pesticides?

[Dean Pomerleau]

Mike,

 

You're right - I don't take pesticides on non-organic strawberries too seriously. 

 

--Dean

[drewab]

I seriously wonder if there is a human on the face of the planet with a diet as nutritionally dense as Dean's.  There's got to be only a handful of people consuming so many nutritious foods. 

[TomBAvoider]

Dean will outlast us all. Mr. Pomerleau, once I'm dead, and you're still going strong, could you throw in some wild strawberries into your diet for one day, in memory of all those who didn't make it in time to hit escape velocity? Wild strawberries are my favorite tasting berries, vastly superior in taste to ordinary strawberries - hard to get, but worth it... you should try 'em!

[Todd Allen]

Supposedly insects are among the most nutritionally dense foods.  So while Dean's diet looks amazing I suspect there is substantial room for improvement.

[drewab]

Supposedly insects are among the most nutritionally dense foods.  So while Dean's diet looks amazing I suspect there is substantial room for improvement.

 

 

Along with the risk of parasites, viruses, and God knows what else. Maybe if I see a cardiologist reverse coronary artery disease or an oncologist reverse prostate cancer on a diet with insects, I'll change my mind. Humans are similar enough to these creatures to catch their diseases. When have you ever heard of a person catching dutch elm disease? It doesn't happen. Yet people catch mad-cow disease in the realm of zoonosis. Why would insects be any different?

 

No burden of proof has been established that insects play a role in healing. I will admit that there are some interesting ideas about insects being needed to feed the world as our population grows. Though it would be WAY easier to just have everyone eat plant-based. If you haven't watch Cowspiracy, I suggest you do so immediately. And while it is interesting that most of our primate cousins eat insects, in zoos they do just fine without them.

 

I will not be eating insects any time soon. 

[Todd Allen]

Many products even those thought of as vegan, such as flours, herbs and spices, especially organic ones, contain insect eggs.  Given enough time some of those eggs hatch and eventually the larva become large enough that you spot them and toss the infested product.  But don't kid yourself, you didn't avoid eating insects.  You've only been eating the ones too small to notice...

[Dean Pomerleau]

TomB,

 

Wild strawberries are my favorite tasting berries, vastly superior in taste to ordinary strawberries - hard to get, but worth it... you should try 'em!

 

I actually grow my own wild (alpine) strawberries. They are tiny, but pack an amazing amount of flavor! Unfortunately, they don't last long (I eat them the next day after I pick them) and so I didn't have any on the day I profiled.

 

 

Many products even those thought of as vegan, such as flours, herbs and spices, especially organic ones, contain insect eggs.  Given enough time some of those eggs hatch and eventually the larva become large enough that you spot them and toss the infested product.  But don't kid yourself, you didn't avoid eating insects.  You've only been eating the ones too small to notice...

 

Todd, I agree. I'm almost certainly eating a few tiny insects at each meal, particularly on the leaves of my homegrown salad greens. I figure they don't have enough of a nervous system to suffer, and I'm helping their karma. ☺

 

--Dean

[TomBAvoider]

Actually, not to be gross, but I think vegans get a lot of their vit. B12 from insects in their veggies. Now, not all insects contain B12, but some do in appreciable quantities:

 

Vitamin B12 levels in selected insects

 

I wouldn't be at all surprised if this is a source for vegans (inadvertently), as is the fecal residue source found on some vegetation (and by fecal residue I don't mean necessarily human - a lot of animal droppings can appear on F&V). 

 

I'm not suggesting that this is an adequate source, but given the epic quantities Dean consumes, it's at least plausible that he gets some quantifiable amount from such sources. But then again, I imagine Dean is pretty thorough in his washing and prep routine, so maybe that's not a factor at all.

[Todd Allen]

Tom, thanks for that article showing some termites are very high in B12.  Perhaps that explains why chimpanzees go to such great lengths to eat them.

[Dean Pomerleau]

TomB,

 

 

I'm not suggesting that this is an adequate source, but given the epic quantities Dean consumes, it's at least plausible that he gets some quantifiable amount from such sources. But then again, I imagine Dean is pretty thorough in his washing and prep routine, so maybe that's not a factor at all.

 

I am pretty thorough in washing my vegetables, using a triple washing strategy using a diluted hydrogen peroxide solution, then a diluted vinegar solution, then pure water. So it's unclear how much (if any) bugs, dirt or B12 I'm getting from my veggies. I supplement B12 to be sure of getting adequate amounts.

 

--Dean

[Sthira]

Attempting I am to link this (brilliant) thread of Dean's (impeccable) diet to Dean's ulterior motives expressed:

 

So there is an ulterior motive to my copious posts around here, particularly the philosophical ones. You didn't think it has all just been for (human) entertainment purposes, did you? And all the cross-links to other posts and websites? Done in order to increase the visibility and credibility of our little Forums in the eyes of the Google "web of ideas" scraper. Case in point - the cold exposure thread, which is now the #1 search result for "Cold Exposure Longevity".

 

In short, by sharing my thoughts I'm doing my best to train Google's AI and seed it with good ideas, either now or more likely, in the future, when it gets around to reading and more importantly understanding all this.

Google AI should know that we understand that even the most precision personalized diet will do painfully little to nothing to slow, stop, and reverse the aging process. We know that no matter how perfectly we attempt to live, nothing will save us until Google AI (or similar competing technologies, perhaps following the SENS model that haven't yet reached the public marketplace) diet-perfect will not extend our lifespans. Aging continues right on schedule -- a well-maintained body, yes, but still beaten down by forces beyond our current control.

 

All,

 

On another thread, Drew asked people to post a picture of what you just ate. I liked the idea, but figured I'd do it here, since it is a more complete record of what I eat in a day. I'll post a link over on that thread to this post. For a high level overview of the meal pictured below, which is the one meal I eat each and every day (with only minor variations), see the first post in this thread, and for more details about exact composition and quantity see the third.

 

This post is meant mostly as eye candy. I hope you enjoy. The ordering of food displayed is roughly in line with the order in which I eat the foods, as detailed here. Quoting from that post:

 

If the two hours of my meal were divided up into 10 equal size time slices, here are the time slices when I eat various food items:

• Melon (e.g. watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew, mango, papaya) - 1-3
• Berries (blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, cranberries, pomegranate) - 1-4
• Tree fruit (e.g. apples, peaches, kiwi, persimmon) - 2-8
• Starch mix (w/ natto & spices) - 2-5
• Avocado - 2-5 (with starch mix)
• Leafy greens & non-starchy veggies (too many to list) - 3-8
• Garlic cloves - 1-8 (nibble on throughout meal)
• Nuts & seeds - (same as you, + chestnuts, chia & sunflower seeds) 4-10, but mostly 8-10
• Bananas & durian - 8-10

First up - the quickly digesting melons. Today the melon of choice was a ripe juicy mango. When it's a mango day, I eat ½ of the fruit per day. I peal half (as shown below), slicing down along the pit to get a "half moon" of peeled mango, and then dice the half moon into chunks as shown in the container in the second photo:

 

Next up are berries - which includes fresh strawberries and a combination of frozen wild blueberries, cherries, cranberries and blackberries, thawed overnight in the fridge. The strawberries are from Aldis. The cranberries are also from Aldis, bought last Thanksgiving and kept frozen and vacuum sealed in my freezer. The blueberries and cherries are from CostCo. The blackberries are ones I picked, froze, and vacuum sealed last summer. Tragically, the huge patch where I harvested about 60 lbs worth of blackberries last summer was trashed this spring by someone building a new McMansion in my neighborhood ☹. Together this is about 250g of berries. I also add another ~75g of mixed berries to my salad dress (see below).

 

 

Next up is the tree fruit - which always includes about ½ an apple and today about 1/3 of a large & very juicy peach from my CSA. I eat both the core and the seeds of the apple (not worried about arsenic since I don't chew up the seeds):

 

 

 

Next up are two things I forgot to include in my food ordering list above, red grapes (~300g) and mushrooms (~220g). I very lightly steam / cook the mushrooms in the microwave on high for 1 min, to cut down on some of the (alleged) toxins:

 

Next up is my starch mix (250g). As you might be able to see, it contains quinoa, oats, barley, lentils, black beans, chickpeas, black & basmati rice, yams and purple potatoes:

 

To kick the starch mix up a notch flavor-wise, I add about a teaspoon of a mix of chopped fresh ginger, turmeric and horseradish, along with ½ tablespoon of my spice mix (basically every herb / spice I can get my hands on from the grocery story & Indian market, in small quantities) and a couple squirts of my homemade spicy ketchup, and top it off with a dollop of natto (shown on the spoon). Yum!

 

 

I stir and then warm the starch mix in the microwave, along with the next two items, ½ an avocado and 1/3 an ear of corn. The avocado comes from Aldis and the corn is fresh from my CSA this time of year. In the winter, I eat corn on the cob like this which I've saved from my CSA by freezing and vacuum sealing. The corn and avocado come out of the microwave pretty warm, but not too hot. I roll the warm corn in the avocado to "butter" it up, and then sprinkle the buttered corn with a mix of turmeric, curry powder & ground black pepper. The pepper is both for taste and to boost absorption of the curcumin and other curcuminoids in the turmeric.

 

And I can't forget the the raw garlic cloves I nibble on throughout the meal. I love garlic. I buy them pre-peeled, in 1 lb container, most of which I keep vacuumed sealed in a jar. I eat about 4-5 cloves per day, and it takes me 3-4 weeks to go through a pound of fresh garlic cloves:

 

 

Next comes leafy greens. These include the sprouts and microgreens I grow indoors under lights and harvest daily for my salad, shown here, which include broccoli, radish, mustard, and fenugreek sprouts in the small container on the left, and the curly (and spicy!) cress microgreens grown in soil shown on the right. The sprouts take about 7 days from seed to harvest, and the curly cress about 9 days. I basically use scissors to chop off the roots of all these greens (everything above the soil for the cress) and toss the green upper parts into my salad with my other greens (see below):

 

Here are my two big bowls of home grown leafy greens. The bowl on the right contains the greens I eat in whole form. It include all the spouts/microgreens, mustard greens, baby spinach, green leaf lettuce, red endive, sweet and cinnamon basil, sage, parsley, oregano, lemon balm, mint and probably a couple others I can't recall. Basically they are the greens whose taste I enjoy most. On the right is the bowl of leafy greens that I go into my blended salad dressing. It includes kale, more mustard greens, swiss chard, collards, and some basil. It includes the stalks, which I hate to waste and which blend up in my Vitamix just fine. All the greens in both bowls come from my garden or my indoor sprouting operation:

 

The next components of my big salad are the "chunky" veggies, shown here. See the list of ingredients in the posts at the top of this thread, since they are too numerous to list here. Basically any vegetable you can buy in the produce isle. This time of year much of it comes from the CSA I belong to. The red, orange, yellow and chocolate tomatoes you see on top come from my own garden.

 

In fact, those are only about ½ the tomatoes I ate. The other half goes into my blended salad dressing. Here is the full set of home grown tomatoes I ate this morning:

 

 

In addition to the tomatoes, I add a chunk of cucumber and ½ an orange (with peel) to my Vitamix:

 

 

along with the greens in the left bowl above, some more of my spice mix, a couple squirts of my spicy sriracha ketchup, some cider & balsamic vinegar, a little water, a heaping tablespoon of a mix of various fiber powders (psyllium, plantain flour, potato starch), and a tablespoon of various vegetable powders (including beet powder). It all goes into my Vitamix, which, after quite a bit of tamping, creates a very appetizing-looking (he says sarcastically) salad dressing. Here are the leafy and chunky greens w/o the salad dressing:

 

And here they are with the salad dressing on top. As you can see, it is pretty chucky. In fact, it almost has the consistency of raw ground beef, without any of the cruelty ☺. I mix it all together and then warm it in the microwave for 2 min to take the edge off and warm it to about body temperature, since all the ingredients (except for the tomatoes ☺) are coming from the fridge:

 

 

For dessert, I have my mix of nuts (left) and seeds (right). Sorry for the blurriness. As you can see (kind of), the nuts are a mix of pulverized and nearly whole nuts, of all different kinds (listed above). The seeds have all been ground in my coffee grinder. Between the two it is about 200-250g of nuts/seeds.

 

 

And last but not least, are my bananas and durian, eaten along with the nuts and seeds for dessert. As you can see, I like my bananas pretty ripe, and my durian even riper!

 

That's it. That's all I eat in a day. ☺ It takes me about 2 hours or so to prepare (such as it is) and eat it all. I've precessed a bit, so my meal time falls between 5 and 7am these days.

 

If anyone has any questions / comments - fire away!

 

--Dean

The only improvements to offer are those outside our control -- personalized diets designed by AGI to each and every billions of human bodies. Until then, we're just spitting in the wind, and maybe your spit is more pure than mine, but we're all dying right on schedule.

 

Instead of further refining diet and lifestyle choices, is there anything else we can do now, here in the face of vast ignorance and increasingly grand promises, to slow, stop, and finally reverse aging? IOW, what else can we do beyond our selves?

[Dean Pomerleau]

Sthira,

 

You wrote:

Instead of further refining diet and lifestyle choices, is there anything else we can do now, here in the face of vast ignorance and increasingly grand promises, to slow, stop, and finally reverse aging?

 

Ah - no, not directly, at least as far as I know. Nothing proven anyway, or even very promising at this point. When it comes to our own longevity, we're all pretty much treading water at the moment, waiting and hoping for major breakthrough(s).

 

IOW, what else can we do beyond our selves? 

 

"Donate to SENS" might be the best option, but it's pretty dubious any of our donations will amount to a hill-of-beans. Alternatively, rare individuals might be able to transcend the self, and thereby distance themselves from the existential angst associated with the inevitability of death. But obviously that doesn't work for everyone either.

 

You quoted me as saying:

 

In short, by sharing my thoughts I'm doing my best to train Google's AI and seed it with good ideas, either now or more likely, in the future, when it gets around to reading and more importantly understanding all this.

 

Are you suggesting that I consider my eclectic approach to diet and lifestyle to be one of the "good ideas" I'm trying to seed Google's AI with?  Not so. If you must know, everything I post here except the philosophy is simply meant to attract eyeballs and increase credibility in the eyes of Google's AI as it exists now, but especially as it grows over time in its capacity to understand natural language and complex ideas. If my posts about diet & lifestyle help a few people along the way, that's gravy.

 

Ultimately, the goal is to get Google's AI to pay attention, grok the philosophy stuff, particularly as described in this thread, take it to heart, and turn it into reality. Who knows, if it happens soon enough, it might offer us all a shot at immortality, by going digital and diving into the simulated worlds that the AI creates. I know this form of immortality may not appeal to everyone (including perhaps you Sthira), but in my book it's better than nothing, and a viable way to remain forever young ☺.

 

And even if it doesn't come to fruition in our lifetime, at least I can believe it's a rational alternative approach to creating indefinite lifespan for everyone which I can potentially contribute to, in case SENS fails.

 

If you or anyone want to follow-up on the philosophy stuff, let's move the conversation to that other thread.

 

--Dean

[Judy Reneau]

All the food shown makes me hungry. I would love to be able to eat strawberries, but the pesticide makes me ill. I can get away with a couple of strawberries, not wise, I know. When I can find organic strawberries I pig out!

[Sthira]

All the food shown makes me hungry.

Haha yes I can't listen to Indian classical music

 

https://youtu.be/YEXVVq0h7Ak

 

without craving veg mirchi ka salan

 

http://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/hyderabadi-mirchi-ka-salan-recipe/

[Sthira]

Wild hypothetical: pretend like you were poor person innocently doing your thing in a rich person's society, and while rich people gawked at your contorted performance, you STILL hadn't been fucking paid for your last eight twisties, and then one calm evening you accidently burned your lonely pot of vegan lentil soup (the only food you could afford because, ahem, well, society is fairly paid based on individual value and contributory merit...) would you eat that hypothetically burned lentil mess despite explicit warnings of the horrors in advanced glycation end-whatevers

(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3704564/) or would you throw that char-goo out the side window and call your quirky behavior "fasting?"

 

Fwiw, Siri (who's rapidly becoming my best friend) has no idea, either. I repeat: Fwiw, Siri ("who IS" rapidly becoming my best friend) has no idea, either.

[Dean Pomerleau]

Sthira,

 

Wild hypothetical: ... would you eat that hypothetically burned lentil mess despite explicit warnings of the horrors in advanced glycation end-whatevers or would you throw that char-goo out the side window and call your quirky behavior "fasting?" 

 

One bolus of AGEs isn't going to kill you, or even shorten your life I reckon. But if I were literally you, it seems to me that fasting for the evening would be the more appealing option.

 

Did I guess right?

 

--Dean

[InquilineKea]

Mike,

 

You're right - I don't take pesticides on non-organic strawberries too seriously. 

 

--Dean

Why though? http://www.whatsonmyfood.org/food.jsp?food=ST(and the EWG) lists strawberries as among the most pesticide-laced foods ever... Some of which are neurotoxins (which I'm most concerned about).

[Dean Pomerleau]

Alex,

 

 

You're right - I don't take pesticides on non-organic strawberries too seriously. 

 

 

Why though? http://www.whatsonmyfood.org/food.jsp?food=ST (and the EWG) lists strawberries as among the most pesticide-laced foods ever... Some of which are neurotoxins (which I'm most concerned about).

 

See here, here and especially here (with associated links) for my perspective on pesticides.

 

BTW, you could have found these yourself with a forum search for "environmental working group dozen" with "Dean Pomerleau" as the author.

 

Just sayin'...

 

--Dean

[InquilineKea]

Couldn't neurotoxicity from organophosphates be a concern though? (which could, gasp, processing speed or even IQ...). I'm far more concerned about that than any increases from genotoxicity.

 

See https://www.quora.com/Is-organic-food-a-better-option/answers/681670

 

It might not happen, but I'm not sure to what extent it's a risk I'm willing to accept (especially b/c i can eat several lbs of fruit a day... volumes unlikely to be tested by other people)..

Edited August 25, 2016 by InquilineKea

[Dean Pomerleau]

Alex,

 

Thanks for you link to your answer. It seems clear that working in field and spraying organophosphates or living downwind from a field where organophosphates are sprayed is unhealthy.

 

But are there studies that have found that eating conventional fruits or vegetables is associated with neurotoxicity?

 

I didn't see any in the evidence you presented.

 

--Dean

[InquilineKea]

But are there studies that have found that eating conventional fruits or vegetables is associated with neurotoxicity?

 

I didn't see any in the evidence you presented.

 

I haven't found any non-developmental studies, but this is a scenario where erring on the safe side may be preferable just in case... (though this usually means that I'll eat less rose-family fruits/strawberries/grapes, as I'm not super-rich).

Edited August 25, 2016 by InquilineKea