I began reading The Jungle Effect: A Doctor Discovers the Healthiest Diets from Around the World—Why They Work and How to Bring Them Home by Daphne Miller, MD., over the weekend. I discovered the book while looking in the health section at Books, Inc. I had just finished Born to Run and was interested in learning more about a healthy diet like the ultrarunner Scott Jurek eats (instead of packing energy bars on runs he takes pita with hummus and other, real, natural foods). The cover of The Jungle Effect instantly caught my attention. The combination of photos and sketches of fresh fruit and vegetables, typography, and papyrus colored background was very enticing to me (you can always judge a book by its cover, by the way). I read the back and inside of the dust jacket and wasn’t let down. Then, while scanning the book’s content, I saw that Dr. Miller had devoted a whole section of her book to the Tarahumara Indians, the ultrarunning community that Christopher McDougall writes about in Born to Run. She even included recipes! To top it off, the book was endorsed by Michael Pollan himself. Sold.

Here’s what Publisher’s Weekly had to say about The Jungle Effect:

Family physician Miller had seen countless cases of chronic illness and weight gain, but it wasn’t until she saw a patient recently returned from Brazil that a light bulb went off in her head: the patient had noticed marked improvement after just a few weeks in her father’s native village. Intrigued, Miller did some research and found a number of “cold spots” around the world, areas where chronic diseases like diabetes, depression and heart disease are disproportionately low. She then embarked on a world tour to find out why. As she travels through Copper Canyon, Mexico to Cameroon, West Africa to Iceland-where locals manage to avoid depression in one of the darkest and coldest regions in the world-and beyond, Miller finds that, in each case, local diet plays a key role. Many of her overarching tips will sound familiar (eat fresh foods, eat more fish, avoid refined sugar, watch the salt, etc.), but a handful of suggestions, such as eating fermented foods and using mushrooms to fight cancer, should come as news. Miller’s work is consistently informative and educational, if at times meandering; each “cold spot” is accompanied by a specific regimen, and Miller’s practical advice and recipes are all geared for the novice. Anyone unafraid of modifying their diet will find this anthropological diet guide useful.

I have just finished the first section, which is the preamble as to why she decided to research certain cultures and what prompted her to want to in the first place. It’s interesting, yet I’m ready to get into the meat of the book (bad word choice, as many of the cultures she studies eat very little meat).

Dr. Daphne Miller actually lives and works in San Francisco. She must have a very long waiting list, but might be willing to refer people to other Doctors like her in the Bay Area. I think she’d make an incredible doctor, as she says in her book that she gives her patients more recipes than prescriptions. Now that’s cool. I agree that the best medicine for much of what ails the western world already exists in the plants growing in the ground. Perhaps returning to a more ‘primitive’ diet is exactly what the doctor orders. I’ll let you know what I discover in the book.