Functional Nutrition:
The Foundation of Absolute Health and Longevity
(in Russian)

For millennia, the human body was dependent on a limited seasonal contingent of raw or semi-raw foods that could be obtained with bare hands and in the wild—mainly fish, seafood, and grazing animals.

Much is made of “gathering,” but it was the least efficient and least relied upon method of sustaining life, because the gathering of edible plants in the wild was severely limited by the seasons (especially as humans moved up north), while fish, seafood, and animal meats where still abundant year-round.

As human intellect, dexterity, and strength evolved, food sources became more numerous, but they still remained relatively small—meats, eggs, and milk from domesticated livestock, and, until recently (in terms of human evolution), agricultural products such as wheat, millet, and rice. Finally, courtesy of the industrial revolution, humans learned to process once-inedible plants, such as soy or wheat bran, into foods for human consumption. Most present day cultivated varieties of fruits and vegetables are also just a brief blimp—less than a few thousand years old—on the evolutionary timeline.

Evolution was merciless. Those who mastered the art of survival passed their genes onto us. These genes determined the makeup and the needs of our bodies. In turn, these needs determine what we should and shouldn’t eat. The choice wasn’t complicated even a hundred years ago because the variety of foods was limited, and almost all of those foods were functional—i.e. they were fulfilling their particular function of sustaining life, beginning with breast milk, the most functional food of all.

Not today. The majority of supermarket-style foods aren’t functional, but simply edible. We can survive on them, but can’t enjoy even a modicum of the health and strength possessed by the cavemen.

Why? Because edible foods sustain life, not health. For vibrant health the food must be functional. And that’s the subject of the fascinating book below, which was the highest-selling Russian title in the United States three years in a row.

An English translation of Functional Nutrition is scheduled for release in 2008.