The Jungle Effect

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.