Saturday 1 March 2008

Eat to Live

The Guardian newspaper recently published a insert describing The Mount Athos Plan, subtitled "Lifestyle secrets of the world's healthiest people." According to the article, The Mount Athos community of Greek Orthodox monks enjoy an extraordinarily low rate of cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer's.

Basically, a series of rules and principles govern this diet, "centred on a philosophy of strict moderation." In essence, if you eat a diet of fresh, natural ingredients consisting mainly of fruit, vegetables and fish, don't gorge yourself, exercise and live a low-stress existence, you will live longer.

No real surprises here, and you really don't need to live a cloistered monk's existence to achieve this, although this would undoubtedly help those with self-control issues like me.

In general, I suppose that moderation is a good thing - as long as you don't overdo it. For me, I'm still contemplating the merits of the coffee, cigarette and lettuce diet.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Love the lettuce fags and coffee diet - it always worked for me! This is a real marketing oppportunity especially if you chuck in the odd kebab as a reward for hitting the 20-a-day target intake.

sigh. And who wants to live to be a 100 if you've got to stay in the monestry the whole time anyway? how long is that exactly in human years? and they can't talk at the dinner table. A life without chat? no thankyou guardian diet/lifestyle gurus, Pass me the gravy and tell me about your day -tommy;-)