The Jungle Effect: A Doctor Discovers the Healthiest Diets from Around the World--Why They Work and How to Bring Them Home

Pizza, pasta, hamburgers, sushi, tacos, and french fries . . . whether our ancestors were born in Madrid, Malaysia, or Mexico, chances are our daily food choices come from all around the globe. Unfortunately, we have taken some of the worst aspects of our varied ancestral menus to turn healthy cuisine into not-so-healthy junk food. Where did we go wrong?

Why is it that non-Western immigrants are so much more susceptible to diabetes and other diet-related chronic diseases than white Americans? How is it possible that relatively poor native populations in Mexico and Africa have such low levels of the chronic diseases that plague the United States? What is the secret behind the extremely low rate of clinical depression in Iceland—a country where dreary weather is the norm? The Jungle Effect has the life-changing answers to these important questions, and many more.

Dr. Daphne Miller undertook a worldwide quest to find diets that are both delicious and healthy. Written in a style reminiscent of Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver, this book is filled with inspiring stories from Dr. Miller's patients, quirky travel adventures, interviews with world-renowned food experts, delicious (yet authentic) indigenous recipes, and valuable diet secrets that will stick with you for a lifetime.

Whether it's the heart-healthy Cretan diet, with its reliance on olive oil and fresh vegetables; the antidepression Icelandic diet and its extremely high levels of Omega 3s; the age-defying Okinawa diet and its emphasis on vegetables and fish; or the other diets explored herein, everyone who reads this book will come away with the secrets of a longer, healthier life and the recipes necessary to put those secrets into 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." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

In her quest to help her immigrant patients who move to the U.S. and often develop chronic diseases, Dr. Miller has undertaken a worldwide quest to find diets that are both delicious and healthy. This work features indigenous recipes along with valuable nutrition information.

Daphne Miller, MD, is a board-certified family physician in private practice in San Francisco. She is an associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco, where she teaches nutrition and integrative medicine. A graduate of Brown University and Harvard Medical School, she did her residency at UCSF and an Integrative Medicine Fellowship at the University of Arizona. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, the architect Ross Levy, and her two children, Arlen and Emet.