About the only regimen that is guaranteed to give you longer life is to continuously deprive yourself of enough to eat?at least it works for mice and fruit flies. People are now beginning to try this diet as well, although we will have to wait to see if it works for humans. Now scientists have discovered a hermit in India who says he hasn’t eaten or drunk anything for 20 years. He’s lived to be 70 and is in perfect health.
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We think of fresh vegetables as something that’s always good to eat, but they can be dangerous. Scallions imported from Mexico recently killed three people and made hundreds more sick. Grow your own? Research shows that vegetables grown in urban gardens can be contaminated with lead.
Marian Burros writes in The New York Times that in 2000, there were as many cases of food poisoning caused by fruits and vegetables as there were from meat, fish and eggs combined. This is due to an increase in imports from countries with lower sanitary standards, where fields are often irrigated with contaminated water.
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People taste and smell things very differently, which is why one person loves broccoli and another person can’t stand it. This means it may be impossible to convince your child to eat foods he hates. And our taste buds also reveal whether or not we’re alcoholics.
Our senses of smell and taste are controlled by 1,000 genes, over half of which are completely inactive. 50 of these 500 inactive genes are switched on in some people, but not in others, which may be why tastes differ. Every human has a different pattern of active and inactive odor-detecting receptors, depending on which genes are switched on and how sensitive we are to them, and people from different ethnic groups taste and smell things differently.
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If you’re frustrated because you can’t seem to stay away for certain foods, it may make you feel better to know that, according to Dr. Neal Barnard, “Certain foods?chocolates, cheeses, sugars, starches and meats?are capable of stimulating the same part of the brain that responds to alcohol, tobacco, even heroin. They unleash a chemical called dopamine, the brain’s feel-good chemical, and that’s why those foods are addictive.”
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