I’ve covered some of this ground before on the blog, but I told you I’d finish the post I began earlier this week, so here goes. I told you I’d try to explain my approach to diet, which has served me well so far. (There are no guarantees.) By “diet” I mean, The stuff I eat. I don’t mean a prescribed regimen designed by someone else, usually to foster weight loss. If my approach has a name, it would be “the ancestral diet.” Eat as your great grandparents ate. An absolute minimum of processed foods. Yes, it helps if you like to cook, because that’s what you’re going to be doing. Use the best quality ingredients available to you. I say, “Available to you,” because the healthiest ingredients aren’t always cheap or easy to find. It sounds silly, but “Shop around the edge of the grocery store” is useful advice. You might say, Our great grandparents ate a lot of fat. Well, yes. They did. And they ate salt and sugar. However, they ate basic ingredients they contributed, not polyunsaturated fats and sugars and salts that some manufacturer somewhere added for taste to everything they produce. It helps to get into it and approach eating as a hobby. I would say “lifestyle,” but I’m trying to make this sound like fun. I was reluctant to bring the subject up—again—because I don’t want to get preachy, but I’ve had some years of experience with this stuff and am happy with the results. And I don’t sweat the occasional hot dog. And ribs are fine. And as for shrimp lightly breaded and fried in monosaturated fat, bring it on. And fettucine Alfredo? Well, you can’t live forever.