The Healthspan Solution: How and What to Eat to Add Life to Your Years

The Healthspan Solution is a diet guide with recipes aimed at increasing the quality of lifespan by improving lifestyle/diet choices. Due out 17th Dec 2019 from Penguin/Random House on their DK imprint, it's 256 pages and will be available in hardcover format.

There is a bewildering plethora of diet advice out there suggesting that eating one thing or avoiding another will improve your health and prolong your life. This book takes a more holistic view and provides some interesting fact based reasoning for following a plant based diet in order to reap a longer healthier lifespan with a slower decline than most western based (meat heavy) diets.

The book's introductory chapters give an overview over society's change from a crisis of under-nutrition and the struggle to acquire enough food to survive to the current situation of over-abundance in much of the world, and an overabundance of cheaper, easier, less nutrient dense (wrong) foods. The authors also spend a fair bit of time and effort explaining the biological changes in aging and maturation, the idea of health optimization by lifestyle and diet choices, and other biochemical processes involved in metabolic processes and how they are affected by aging. Roughly 40% of the page content is used exploring the available research and explaining some of the biology involved. They do an admirable job of making the science interesting and layman accessible.

The introductory chapters are followed by recipes arranged thematically: soups, salads, sides, sweets, and sauces. Each of the recipes includes an introductory description, ingredients listed in a bullet point sidebar (US measurements only, no metric conversions), and step by step instructions. There is no nutritional info provided. The recipes are photographed very well and clearly, with roughly 50% of the dishes shown in a photograph. Serving suggestions are attractive and appropriate. 

The recipe ingredients themselves are mostly easily sourced and will be available at well stocked grocery stores along with some ingredients being found in international/Asian markets (kombu, nori, etc). The book does include a solid cross referenced index which includes ingredients.

The book also includes an impressive links/annotations/resources list which will give readers a rich source for further investigation. 

Four stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.