What was your main motivation?
I started reading medical journals
when I was about 14, because I was convinced
there was something wrong with the food industry.
I would read medical journals because I thought
if I could equip myself with the right knowledge
I could make my own decisions regarding my nutrition
and health. I got so into it that I wrote my own
medical paper because I was actually quite disturbed watching the majority of the world eat so much glucose and missing out on good fats.
The main thing is I really think people eat
too many complex carbohydrates. Deliberately I haven�t eaten wheat or simple sugars for a long time.
At R.S. Currie & Co. there was a sweets counter
and the kids were always shocked
that I never ate any. Then I went to San Francisco
and met a lot of super smart people
who had read about nutrition as well,
and these were figures I really admired.
Reassuringly, pretty much all of them
ate like I did but they also taught me
about CRON, because CRON is the added �tweak�
to optimize the Paleo lifestyle.
CRON means you have to
watch that you a) don�t eat too much and
b) still get 100 percent or more of every single nutrient.
It�s tough, especially at the beginning, but these people in San Francisco have been doing it for years and
are now at optimum health.
I always laugh at the memory
from university in London when someone told me
that they thought I was peculiar
because I sat at the back of lectures
drinking huge bottles of Alkaline water and eating almonds while everyone munched on sweets.
My best friend Chester always sat next to me
because he knew that those Marcona almonds
were super delicious.
Why is Cron diet also called the longevity diet?
There is this intellectual movement, that unfortunately mainly focuses in the US,
pushed by the American author, inventor,
and director of engineering at Google: Ray Kurzweil. He is probably the most famous face behind
the Singularity movement. It�s mainly about the progress of technology, but there is also a discussion that the advances in computational power and medicine will
allow us to be become immortal � if we just live
long enough to get there. I�m not sure about the whole immortality thing, but I like the idea of being healthy for as long as possible.
A lot of people I met doing the CRON diet
in San Francisco base their studies on
medical research in longevity in animals and humans.
A lot of the guys are in their 50s
and want to optimize their life span and avoid grave
diseases so they can see as much of
forthcoming technological developments
as possible. I don�t know many diets that try to ensure that you have 100 percent of every nutrient. They call this the Longevity diet- the aim is very good health, whereas the goal of most diets is just to lose weight.