Quotes from John Durant

Shifting to a low-sugar, lower carbohydrate diet is particularly important for people looking to lose weight or repair their metabolism, and it seems prudent for everyone.

In its current form, modern running is a high risk contact sport.

Evolution is amoral. Just because something is natural doesn't make it morally good ("the naturalistic fallacy"). Conversely, just because something is morally desirable doesn't make it true ("the moralistic fallacy").

Slow cooking is one of the oldest methods of cooking.

An increasing number of devices allow people to collect data about themselves: blood sugar levels, the number of steps taken each day, and sleep cycles. It won't be long before checking blood work will only require a relatively inexpensive device that plugs into a smartphone, not a visit to the doctor's office. The cost of sequencing the genome continues to drop, and soon it will be as unremarkable as taking a fingerprint.

Liver is one of the most famously healthy foods in the world: according to a Chinese proverb, "Eat liver, fortify your own liver";

Grass-fed butter is a rich source of vitamin A, a healthy fat called CLA (conjugated linoleic acid), and vitamin K2. Many grocery stores now carry Kerrygold, an authentic Irish grass-fed butter.

These days we have insulated ourselves from the sounds of other people and nature. From infancy we are training young children to expect near perfect silence, and it becomes harder for them to sleep without it.

Deer get to live in the wild, and then they die fairly quickly from a well-placed shot to the vitals. For a deer, the most likely alternatives are a slower and more painful death by a nonhuman predator (i.e., getting torn apart by a coyote), starvation, or disease. Being killed by a skilled human hunter may well be the least painful way for a deer to die.

Excessive consumption of fructose contributes to the development of fatty liver disease, kidney stones, and gout.

In theory, vegetarianism is a lifestyle that anyone might adopt. In practice, vegetarianism is popular among a very specific slice of the general population in the Western world: young urban women. Studies of vegetarians generally find that 65 to 75% of vegetarians are female—in other words, two to three times as many women as men.

Some male vegetarians have described how their rejection of meat felt emasculating, since they were also rejecting the ancient male role of killer and griller. Vegetarians frequently try to counteract this feminine connotation by touting all the manly men who are vegetarian (Mike Tyson!). One article even profiled a few masculine kale-loving "hegans." At the very least, the protestations to the contrary show that the perception exists.

The best ways to motivate human beings are the oldest ways, tapping into timeless needs and emotions: hunger, thirst, fear of death, sex, beauty, identity, status, respect, honor, shame, love, compassion, community, fun. All of these tie back, directly or indirectly, to those most fundamental and evolutionary of motivations: survival and reproduction. The secret is learning how to tap these ancient motivations, and harnessing them to achieve modern goals.

More important than raw size is what we can do with our brains, such as communicate with complex language and learn through culture.

It's also probably not a good idea to cook meat at extremely high heat, as charred meat has many toxins.

One has to understand the dynamics of the species and habitat in question, and most armchair ethicists haven't the faintest clue.

As for bad genetics, well, heart disease happens to be the number one killer of male gorillas in captivity. Heart disease is also the number one killer of male humans in civilization. Median life expectancy for male gorillas in zoos is thirty-one years, so Mokolo's age of twenty-two roughly corresponds to a man in his fifties. While heart disease may be common at this age, there's nothing inevitable about a middle-aged man—or gorilla—dying from a heart attack.

I propose that a scientifically sound set of hygiene rules could explain why the Jewish God was a jealous, monotheistic God: He could brook no compromise with the filthy practices of rival gods. Famously faceless, abstract, and unsuperstitious, the Jewish God was science.

There's no one else who can make the daily decisions—eating well, exercising regularly—that deliver lifelong health. In other words, being healthy is a "do-it-yourself" project. Seen in that light, we are all biohackers. Yet too many people entrust their day-to-day decisions to authority figures—the tools, as it were—on the assumption that the experts actually know what they're talking about.

as scientifically sound health advice, "Everything in moderation" is as nourishing as white bread. The very people who need to eat more moderately are also the ones who seem to have the most difficulty actually doing so.

Barefoot running is often described as a fad—one that will fizzle after a few years. But as Dr. Lieberman says, "If barefoot running is a fad, then it's a two-million-year-old fad.

The goal isn't to feed the world but to spark innovation and incentivize incremental improvements by established players.

Far more calories are used to heat the body than to move it.

Listening to vegetarians talk about the benefits of a plant-based diet, it can be hard to separate health claims from ideological, ethical, or environmental claims. At various times it has been claimed that vegetarianism can end world hunger; end food cravings; reverse global warming; reverse heart disease; reduce violent crime; reduce cholesterol; improve the sex drive; reduce the sex drive; end sexism; cure cancer, and usher in the Age of Aquarius. Apparently soybeans grow best in bullshit.