Health Markers

People tend to accept their daily energy level and their sense of physical decline beginning in middle age as normal and unrelated to diet. "Normal" in this sense means average, it means what is happening to the vast majority, it means acceptance of disability and death in your seventies or eighties, rather than freedom from disease and the enjoyment of an active, vigorous, youthful life to well beyond the century mark. Many people simply have not experienced the increased well-being and remarkable physical transformation that a truly wholesome diet guarantees.

There are tests you can do yourself, or have done by your doctor, which give an indication of your "functional" age and/or your health status. Both types of tests are often referred to as biomarkers. While there is some overlap between biomarkers of "functional" age and those of health, the two categories are not the same. Biomarkers or indicators of health status mainly reflect susceptibility to disease. If you are a relatively sedentary person on a diet high in saturated fats and fairly high in total calories, you are almost certainly developing arteriosclerosis at a rate much higher than active persons on a good diet. This situation can be estimated rather well by certain health indicators, mainly your blood fat profile. But having severe arteriosclerosis, even though it may kill youfrom a heart attack or stroke, for exampledoesn't necessarily mean you are "functionally" older in your whole body. You may have skin that is unwrinkled and hair that is without graying, but still have blood vessels in your heart that are progressively clogging up. Your blood fat profile will tip you off to this situation while you still have time to effect a change.

Brain Function

Probably the greatest fear about growing old is the possibility of serious mental decline: forgetting things, being
confused in public, and much worse. The extent to which this really happens, and especially the time of onset of the decline, is a subject of debate. Whatever the details may be, however, and judging again by animal data, the decline can be slowed, even largely prevented, by the Anti-Aging Plan with caloric limitation.

Mental function in laboratory animals can be estimated by their ability to navigate a complicated maze or
labyrinth. How many trials does it take to learn when to choose this turn, that turn, and not end in blind alleys; and finally to arrive at the reward at the end of the maze? On such a test, a 32-month-old calorie-restricted mouse does as well as a 12-month-old ad lib mouse. This is roughly equivalent to a 75 year-old human showing the same speed of learning and same memory retention as a 25-year-old. And in rats the age-related slowdown in rate of learning and in memory utilization are largely eliminated by nutrient-rich caloric limitation.

Biosphere Experience

The actual diet eaten by the Biospherians during the two years sealed inside was high in quality (we can refer to
this as nutrient rich, which means each calorie is packed with nutrition) and low in calories, but quite limited in
variety. It's not very satisfying to have sweet potatoes as part of every mealbreakfast, lunch, and dinnerfor two to
three straight months, just because they are growing well during that season. (We became very ingenious at
preparing sweet potatoes in different waysas custards mixed with bananas, as roasted slices, baked whole, and so
on). Another of our seasons might be extra heavy on beetseven harder to prepare in different ways.

All Biospherians cooked. Every eighth day you had to prepare breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the whole crew.
Almost every breakfast included a porridge made from whole-wheat flour and bananas. The wheat had to be
grown, harvested, threshed, and ground, all by us. And that's just a small task when you're running a whole miniworld.

shows what and how much was eaten by each Biospherian on eight representative days. Crops in
Biosphere 2 were planned so that a complete nutritional complement was always available (the nutrient-rich
calorie), despite changing crop cycles. There were six varieties of fruit (banana, fig, guava, lemon, papaya,
kumquat), five cereal grains (oats, rice, sorghum, wheat, corn), split

REPRESENTATIVE DAILY INTAKES OVER TWO YEARS
IN BIOSPHERE 2 ((GIVEN AS TWO RANDOM DAYS FROM EACH
OF THE FOUR SIX MONTH PERIODS)) *
FOODS AMOUNT (IN GRAMS)
banana 375 197 281 260 254 225 263 319
fig 66 40
guava 13 8 5
lemon 12 6 10 5 12 10
papaya 169 152 35 131 186
kumquat 16
peanuts 25 18 15 18 18 18 18 68
rice 57 102 57 57 57
sorghum 40 70 70
wheat 75 76 198 73 73 153 153 96
corn, 17
beans,
dried 36
lablad 36 28 28 57
pinto 9 50 57
soy 9 29 57
string 26 15 37
peas, split 18
beets 225 281 153 90 118
beet greens 84 40
bok choi 90
cabbage 125 108
carrots 48 86 20 150
chard 188 86 125 33 46 67
eggplant 56 14 37 60 80
cucumber 63 60
herbs 2 15
lettuce 63 46 8 64 40 37 23
malanga 143 280 115
onions 99 66 10 17 18 12
parsley 5 2 4
pepper, green 4 84 73 82 24 50
pepper, red 2 20
potato, swt 300 519 468 552 630 411
potato, wht 236 239
raddish 48
squash 241 394 238 42 71 78 25
tomato 58 321 30 60 84 28
turnip grns 60
eggs 30
goat milk 100 50 70 150 100 165 235 150
pork 43
pork 43
total cal 1825 1863 1910 2201 1935 2190 2140 2274
fat, gms 27 19 22 39 36 37 30 51
protein 62 60 68 69 56 78 70 73
carb 370 360 395 434 327 432 440 425
fiber, gms 48 61 55 52 44 61 55 48
* Additional foods available at various times, but not used on these 8
random days, included oats, millet, kidney beans, lima beans, kale fresh
peas, sweet potatoe greens, purslane, turnips, raddishes, chicken, fish
(talapia), goat meat, and yogurt.