(FYI: Get ready for a 3,000-word a nerdy nutritional and biochemistry discussion!)
This article is my plea to chefs, restaurateurs and hoteliers to think about a culinary style that has yet to be properly expressed within a dining business entity. The idea is to explain that, yes, there is a lucrative opportunity here for being a trendsetter. Let’s start carving…
Most often, culinary styles are defined and evolved through the storytelling and creation of a sense of place that celebrates a specific geographic region – traditional Lyonnaise cuisine, rustic Sardinian, New American, contemporary Levantine and so on. Healthier options are added – as is required for many businesses nowadays due to increasingly strong customer demand – but the soul of the menu is always this sense of place because that quality is what will enchant patrons, bring up the average table cover and drive media accolades.
Even for the bucket-list fine dining outlets like Alinea, Noma or Eleven Madison Park that source rarer foods (often great for gut health by promoting microbiome diversity) and ingredients of the highest quality (often grown on-property for rural eateries or delivered fresh each morning from trusted suppliers so as to preserve flavor and nutrient concentrations), the focus is still guest experience first and health optimization somewhere further down the list.
Health First, Geography Second
To describe “Longevity Cuisine” as a culinary style in its own right would mean that chefs and managers must prioritize healthy ingredients ahead of geographic theme and – gasp! – flavor or mouthfeel. This isn’t to say that geography and flavor aren’t considerations – they better be – but that the key variable we are optimizing for is longevity or ‘food as medicine’. These are ingredients and preparation methods from around the world that have been shown to promote better energy levels and cognition in the immediate term as well as healthspan (the elongation of good, active years while one is alive) in the long run.
A great example of the emergence of longevity cuisine as a style unto itself is the concept of MediterrAsian dining. This simple portmanteau of ‘Mediterranean’ and ‘Asian’ denotes the fusion of two highly researched culinary styles common amongst centenarian communities.
On the one hand, the Mediterranean Diet has been highly publicized, starting with “The Blue Zones” which highlighted Sardinia and the Greek island of Ikaria. But as great as a diet high in green vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, herbs, wild fish and sheep or goat dairy is, it excludes the innumerous benefits from eating according to the traditional Okinawan diet or those of other researched areas like Bama Yao in China and the “Blue Zone 2.0” that is Singapore.
A merger of continents would bring together a best-of-the-best presentation, creating a point of differentiation and an attraction for diners by implying, “Everything on the menu will leave you healthier than when you came in.”
About My Longevity Berry Bowl
Before breaking down the above picture, let me first note that this is a bit of me giving away the store in that I am a consultant and devising wellness plans that may or may not involve critiquing the menu from a health standpoint is part of how I earn a living. That said, I’ve taken the time to write out this article because, frankly, I am frustrated by the lack of evolution of the basic berry bowl as a restaurant dish over the past two decades.
It’s always blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and strawberries. Caveat emptor: I am definitely not implying that this menu mainstay is a bad addition. Even in their basic form, these four fruits are low glycemic and packed with polyphenols. If you have to choose binarily between having a berry bowl or not, please go berry.
But next ask yourself, where’s the product differentiation? Sure, we’re sourcing organic now and reducing food miles (which again preserves nutrient density through increased freshness), but it’s still the same four fruits no matter whether you’re in Los Angeles or London.
We’re seeing inklings of longevity-based injections like added açai berry powder or a dash of spirulina, but there’s so much more that chefs can do based on the latest research and nutritional discoveries. The picture for my berry bowl is based on years of trial and error, and loads of nutritional research, as well as what I can source based on my time and financial limitations, all to try and deliver the most longevity bang for spoonful buck.
One important principle that has guided what I include in this berry bowl is called ‘Nature’s Symphony’ or what renowned nutritionists like T. Colin Campbell might describe as ‘wholism’. This concept describes how eating great foods together in their natural, latticed form – what’s called the ‘food matrix’ elicits the desired synergistic health benefits while, on the contrary, the consumption of only extracts, pills or other ultra-processed forms of these nutrients often fails to pass muster.
Nature knows best, and evolutionarily speaking our bodies have yet to properly adapt to absorb, for instance, vitamin C tablets versus orange slices – a fruit that’s well-known for containing this antioxidant. Some studies have even shown that overconsumption of synthetic, non-time-released vitamin C in its raw, non-matrixed form actually increases risks of cancer! (This nuance is beyond scope here, but I can blab on in a DM about the latest research into ‘hyper-reductive redox’ states.)
I opt for a hybrid approach between pure wholism and supplement everything. Trying to get as natural as possible where possible, the bowl consists of a base of whole foods in combination with powders and supplements that enhance the health properties of the berries by providing a different spectrum of complementary molecules.
As a final note before parsing out the ingredients, let me say that this is a slightly acquired taste. It’s soggy, jammy and gritty, and not nearly as sweet as its ordinary counterpart – often weird tasting due to certain additives. To repeat, though, I am partially sacrificing flavor and mouthfeel in order to optimize for health. Or, to phrase this in more philosophical musings, why does every meal have to be tasty? Sure, we don’t want to feel discomfort with every bite, but sometimes a bit of bitter makes for much better.
–MAIN INGREDITENT BREAKDOWN—
The first step involves rehydrating aronia berries (also known as black chokeberries). You can do this in water over several hours, but because I also need to defrost the blueberries and raspberries (both purchased at Costco for cost savings and the convenience of scooping out of a freezer bag), I layer the frozen berries over the dried ones; the melted-off juice from one rehydrates the other.
The berry biochemicals:
Aronia Berries: This less-known berry forms the base of the bowl because, unless you’re growing it yourself, you can probably only source it in dried form. What you should know about Aronia is that its dark-as-black color derives from its huge ORAC (oxygen radical absorbance capacity) value, higher than açai or elderberry.
My rational for selecting this berry was that I wanted the ORAC and the black – a different color than blueberries to offer more spectrum of color and thus more diversity in total polyphenols. Like frozen fruits or powders, coming in dried form is also quite convenient
Wild Low Bush Blueberries: This is the meat of the bowl, wherein I’m looking for the low bush varietal because it produces smaller fruit that haven’t been bred for sugar content like the fresh ones you find in the typical supermarket. Already renowned as a superfood, one particular compound that’s high in blueberries and bilberries is pterostilbene, a stilbene that’s a prominent sirtuin gene and autophagy (intracellular recycling) activator.
The reason why you want ‘wild’ is due to hormesis, wherein the plant’s fight for survival ramps up antioxidant content compared to farmed fruit (often many multiples more). Available at Costco from the frozen foods aisle, you pour these over the aronia berries, letting the juices from the thaw act as the mixer for all the other additives below.
Organic Raspberries: Also found in the frozen foods section at Costco, these aren’t wild but one step down – organic. Following the ‘eat the rainbow’ principle, these are included because their red color is produced by different molecules than the blue-purple of blueberries or the purple-black of aronia berries, thus offering a strong complement when consumed together.
In particular, raspberries are one of only a handful of foods that are high in ellagitannins, a molecule that bacteria in the colon use as a substrate to make urolithin (A, B, C, D or E), a postbiotic that our bodies absorb and is a powerful mitochondrial rejuvenator. While many people lack the specific bacteria species that converts ellagic acid into urolithin, I would nonetheless advocate for regularly eating foods high in ellagitannins such as pomegranates and walnuts, while the highest concentration by weight was found in golden raspberries (harder to find) and trace amounts can be found in oak-aged red wine (hence, a minor contributor to the French Paradox).
Barberry Raisins: Another dry ingredient, although far softer than aronia, these little fruits are deep red in color, helping close the color spectrum gap between raspberries and blueberries. Significantly, the main reason I include them, besides convenience, is that they contain a powerful autophagy activator called berberine whose mechanism is different from the stilbene-sirtuin pathway. Often jokingly called ‘poor’s man metformin’, berberine can blunt sugar-induced insulin spikes, helping lessen any peaks and troughs of consuming too many carbs all at once. Plus, by eating the berries and not just berberine pills, it’s in its ‘wholistic’ or matrixed form.
As a noteworthy aside, berberine is also being studied as an inhibitor of the flavin-containing monooxygenase 3 (FOM3) enzyme which is responsible for converting trimethylamine (TMA) from fermented animal meats in the gut into the artery-clogging scourge molecule that is TMAO. Ergo, reduced FOM3 activity as attenuated by berberine may mean reduced risk of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs).
–ADDITIVES BREAKDOWN—
This by itself is tasty once the frozen berries have thawed and the aronia have rehydrated. Now we move on to the additives where the concept is to complement the rainbow spectrum of health compounds while also looking broader at what the body does under autophagic conditions. From the picture, all the additives besides bee pollen and orange zest have already been blended in to soak up the thawed berry juice.
Roughly a teaspoon of each, these additives are:
Bee Pollen: An ingredient I recommend for anyone with seasonal allergies, the way bee pollen works is by presenting trace amounts of potential allergens to your immune cells, thus training your enteric immune system to become accustomed to their presence and thereby not ‘freak out’ by producing a full-blown allergic reaction when encountered elsewhere. This ingredient comes in dry form for long shelf-life and added convenience.
Spirulina: Producing a slightly fishy taste, this superfood helps round out the berry bowl with a blue-green color that’s a result from phycocyanin, a unique polyphenol found only in these algae. Spirulina also contains some omega-3 fats for those that are interested.
Maqui Berry Powder: Produced from a tree found in the Chilean temperate rainforest (hence it’s other name, the Chilean wineberry), this rare fruit is chosen specifically because it’s the highest in a stilbene called delphinidin that works synergistically with the pterostilbene found in blueberries, thus amplifying each other’s restorative capabilities. Like açai, you can only really get this in pulverized form because the moment you pull it off its bearings it starts degrading very quickly.
Beetroot Powder: A deep red color, beetroot powder has been studied for its vasodilatory effects, likely as a result of specific compounds that produce nitric oxide in the blood. Beets are also a prominent source of betaine or trimethyl-glycine (TMG), a powerful DNA methyl donor that can help to rejuvenate a person’s epigenetic profile. And just to confuse you and to show you the chaotic interplay of physiology, some bacterial species break down TMG into TMA in the gut, which can then be absorbed into the hepatic portal system and converted into the bad TMAO by the liver. More time with the right foods, these bacteria can be reduced in population to minimize this pathway.
Reishi Powder: I include one fungi-based adaptogen powder in here because, shrug, why not? The healing powers of fungi merit their own 3,000-word essay. For here and now, the reishi (Japanese name) or lingzhi (Chinese name) has long been acknowledged by traditional Eastern medicine practitioners respectively as the ‘mushroom of immortality’ due to specific compounds within it that boost the immune system and modulate stress.
Collagen Powder: Comprising roughly one third of our total bodily protein in various forms, study after study is showing that collagen supplementation helps to upregulate collagen fiber synthesis and maintenance, doing everything from making your skin appear more youthful to lubricating joints and growing thicker hair follicles. Taking collagen in tandem with fruit is ideal because vitamin C is an important cofactor for the enzymes involved in collagen synthesis.
Orange Zest: While the flesh and juice of an orange is known for its vitamin C and flavonoids, the zest is where you will find a longevity compounds called naringin and naringenin (the former’s glycoside version). What’s fascinating about naringin is that it’s been found to specifically inhibit matrix metalloprotease (MMP), a key enzyme that initiates collagen fiber breakdown. Hence, less MMP activity means more collagen preservation and more youthful functionality throughout the body, essentially multiplying the antiaging efforts by collagen and vitamin C.
Insofar as sourcing orange zest, I make it myself by zesting organic oranges then leaving them out to airdry before putting them in a ‘zest jar’ in the freezer where they are good for several months (again, convenience). I would caution that you should only ever zest organic citrus fruits as nonorganic ones can be sprayed more than a dozen times during their lifetime and you don’t want those chemicals in your body.
Resveratrol (pills): The only supplement I take with this berry mixture is yet another stilbene, and in fact this is the only time I ever take this specific supplement so that it can work synergistically with all the other key stilbenes present (pterostilbene, delphinidin and others). As background for why only with stilbenes, while resveratrol was lauded during the late aughts as the world’s longevity wunderkind, recent research has been middling at best. While in vitro, resveratrol is a verifiable sirtuin activator, but in vivo it needs to be taken wholistically to elicit those same effects.
Found prominently in red grape skins (thus another French Paradox contributor), the issue that its concentration in this natural state is still too low, so much that you would have to eat an entire bushel’s worth of grapes or more to get the necessary dose to yield the in vitro results – with a lot of sugar in tow. Hence, the pill form can work, but only when it’s taken with food and other stilbenes so that it abides by nature’s symphony.
And circling back to the side thread about gut production of TMA, there is emerging evidence that resveratrol can shift the microbiota composition to thereby reduce plasma TMAO levels (still relatively new research, so DM if you need the source on this). This is why I’m taking four pills instead of one; as a meat eater, I want to prime my gut biodiversity to downregulate TMA production from common molecules in animal meat like choline and carnitine so that I can absorb those health-promoting compounds when I enjoy a steak, eggs or fish without significant conversion into TMA (which would then result in more artery-clogging TMAO in the blood).
Name Your Price
Who knew that so much nerdy science and health could go into a wee little berry bowl? Know that while this is a lot of ingredients, I’m not just doting away while preparing this; I’m listening to audiobooks or podcasts, or possibly also in-between sets of various home exercises. I’m multitasking because I already have the routine down; if you’re trying to follow this, it may help to monotask until a habit is formed.
To the point of this conclusion, with all the various ingredients included and the labor involved in assembling all this, what would you charge for this berry bowl at a restaurant? I would argue that there is burgeoning demand within a ‘health above all else’ psychographic of restaurant and hotel guests who would have no problem paying at least double the typical price for a standard berry bowl if they knew that the dish contained a multitude of synergistic compounds with strong scientific backing for their longevity benefits.
To also close out our fun aside on limiting TMAO, perhaps people can have their steak and eat it too by including meaty mains or pairings that are purposefully designed to disfavor gut production of TMA or simultaneously inhibit enzymes that convert TMA into TMAO. As an example, image pairing a salmon dish with a berberine and a resveratrol pill…and then charging an extra $10 for the service.
Our current gold standard for this nascent area of research on TMAO-induced CVD, like so many other things, is the Mediterranean Diet, whereby resveratrol in red wine or balsamic vinegar along with dimethyl butanol (DMB) in extra virgin olive oil has been shown to suppress this TMA-TMAO pathway. Combining these sorts of observations with quality, non-CAFO (caged animal feeding operation) meats – that is, grass-fed and grass-finished, pasture-raised chickens or wild-caught fish – gives yet more credence to traditional preparation methods found in Mediterranean countries. Would a table be willing to pay more for a Bistecca Fiorentina that comes with all the right ‘longevity fixings’? I would argue yes, but only if serving teams are trained appropriately.
Ultimately, with ingredients native to multiple continents, this berry bowl is but one example of what a longevity cuisine might represent as well as what the potential is for increased restaurant pricing. Perhaps you don’t need to reinvent the wheel by creating a whole new culinary style but at least challenge your teams to be more purposeful with ingredient selection along the lines of health enhancement and not only flavor enhancement or going with the current trends. Feel free to chime in with comments of your own longevity meals or biohacking recreations of classic menu items.
