The Jungle Effect: Healthiest Diets from Around the World--Why They Work and How to Make Them Work for You

Why do the relatively poor native populations in Mexico and Africa have such low levels of the chronic diseases that plague the United States?

Why is the rate of seasonal affective disorder in Iceland--a country where dreary weather is the norm--so low?

Why is it that older women in Okinawa have such low breast cancer rates that it is not considered cost-effective for them to get screening mammograms?

The Jungle Effect has the life-changing answers to these important questions, and many more.

Whether it's the heart-healthy Cretan diet, with its reliance on olive oil and fresh vegetables, the antidepressive 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 action. The Jungle Effect 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.

Daphne Miller, M.D., is a practicing physician, author, and professor of family medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. For the past decade, her writing and teaching has explored the frontier between biomedicine and the natural world. Her widely acclaimed first book, The Jungle Effect, chronicles her nutrition adventures as she travels to traditional communities around the globe. A contributing columnist to the Washington Post as well as other newspapers and magazines, Miller holds a medical degree from Harvard University and an undergraduate degree from Brown University. She lives and gardens in Berkeley, California.