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BYMARKBITTMAN AND

DAVIDL.KATZ

REVIEW

Cities Built

By Royal

Command

IN 1420, THE YONGLE

Emperor moved China’s

capital from Nanjing to

the city then known as

Beiping. To house his

government he built the Forbidden

City, the largest wooden complex in

the world, with more than 70 palace

compounds spread across 178 acres.

Incredibly, an army of 100,000 arti-

sans and one million laborers fin-

ished the project in only three years.

Shortly after moving in, the emperor

renamed the city Beijing, “northern

capital.”

In the 600 years since, countless

visitors have marveled at Yongle’s

creation. As its name suggests, the

Forbidden City could only be entered

by permission of the emperor. But

the capital city built around it was

an impressive symbol of imperial

power and social order, a kind of 3-D

model of the harmony of the uni-

verse.

Beijing’s success and longevity

marked an important leap forward in

the history of purpose-built cities.

The earliest attempts at building a

capital from scratch were usually hu-

bristic affairs that vanished along

with their founders. Nothing remains

of the fabled Akkad, commissioned

by Sargon the Great in the 24th cen-

tury B.C. following his victory over

the Sumerians.

But the most vainglorious and ul-

timately futile capital ever con-

structed must surely be Akhetaten,

later known as Amarna, on the east

bank of the Nile River in Egypt. It

was built by the Pharaoh Akhenaten

around 1346 B.C. to serve as a living

temple to Aten, the god of the sun.

The pharaoh hoped to make Aten the

center of a new monotheistic cult,

replacing the ancient pantheon of

Egyptian deities. In his eyes, Amarna

was a glorious

act of personal

worship. But

to the Egyp-

tians, this hastily erected city of mud

and brick was an indoctrination

camp run by a crazed fanatic. Nei-

ther Akhenaten’s religion nor his city

long survived his death.

In 330 B.C., Alexander the Great

was responsible for one of the worst

acts of cultural vandalism in history

when he allowed his army to burn

down Persepolis, the magnificent

Achaemenid capital founded by Dar-

ius I, in revenge for the Persian de-

struction of Athens 150 years earlier.

Ironically, the year before he de-

stroyed a metropolis in Persia, the

Macedonian emperor had created

one in Egypt. Legend has it that Al-

exander chose the site of Alexandria

after being visited by the poet

Homer in a dream. He may also have

been influenced by the advantages of

the location, near the island of

Pharos on the Mediterranean coast,

which boasted two harbors as well

as a limitless supply of fresh water.

Working closely with the famed

Greek architect Dinocrates, Alexan-

der designed the walls, city quarters

and street grid himself. Alexandria

went on to become a center of Greek

and Roman civilization, famous for

its library, museum and lighthouse.

No European ruler would rival the

urban ambitions of Alexander the

Great, let alone Emperor Yongle, un-

til Tsar Peter the Great. In 1703, he

founded St. Petersburg on the

marshy archipelago where the Neva

River meets the Baltic Sea. His goal

was to replace Moscow, the old Rus-

sian capital, with a new city built ac-

cording to modern, Western ideas.

Those ideas were unpopular with

Russia’s nobility, and after Peter’s

death his successor moved the capi-

tal back to Moscow. But in 1732 the

Romanovs transferred their court

permanently to St. Petersburg,

where it remained until 1917. Some-

times, the biggest urban-planning

dreams actually come true.

GETTY IMAGES

HISTORICALLY SPEAKING

AMANDA FOREMAN

The monument of

Peter the Great in

St. Petersburg.

The constant noise of new diet theories can make every choice seem

wrong, but there are tried-and-true ways to achieve good nutrition.

WeActuallyKnow

WhatWeShouldEat

ILLUSTRATIONS: ROBERT NEUBECKER

former and less of the latter.

But the best approach is to focus

on actual foods rather than to fix-

ate on their components. From a

food-by-food vantage point, some

principles emerge that will outlast

all diet fads.

Beans:A few years ago, a theory

that natural proteins called lectins

in beans and legumes might be bad

for us gave rise to a bestselling

book trying to talk people out of

eating them. But we already knew,

based on massive evidence, that

people eating beans and legumes

routinely had bet-

ter health, not

worse.

A 2010 study found the single

largest reduction in heart disease

risk among women who replaced

beef with beans. Another pub-

lished in 2016, which followed

more than 100,000 people for

more than 30 years, showed mark-

edly lower mortality when more

calories came from plant protein—

notably beans—than from animal

protein. Beans are one of the most

common foods in the world’s “blue

zones,” where people routinely live

to 100.

Meat:In an influential report

published last year, the EAT-Lancet

Commission on food, planet and

health concluded that per-capita

meat consumption in developed

countries needs to go down by

nearly 90% to keep food production

within sustainable boundaries. For-

tunately, we don’t have to choose

between what is best for our health

and for sustaining the planet: They

match. Both would benefit greatly if

we shift our diets toward more

plant-based nutrition.

To be fair, whether meat-eating

is good for us is a question compli-

cated by the sort of meat we’re

considering. Nearly 35% of the calo-

ries in the flesh of modern, grain-

fed beef cattle comes from fat,

much of it saturated. Grass-fed beef,

chicken and lean turkey each pro-

vide incremental improvement. But

the meat our ancestors ate had a

far more beneficial nutritional pro-

file—which is still the case for wild

game today because of its varied

diet and unimpeded exercise.

Dairy:Are milk products good or

bad? Yes—depending on what

dairy, what farm, your metabolism,

your genes and what it replaces in

your diet. Milk (either whole or

skim) is a good thing if it is replac-

ing Coke or Pepsi. Good cheese is

an upgrade from cheese puffs.

Greek yogurt is a far better snack

than pork rinds.

But you are subject to nutritional

liabilities, not benefits, if the milk

replaces water, because it increases

your intake of saturated fats. Opting

for cheese over raw almonds or

choosing yogurt over bean salad are

dietary downgrades. Those swaps

get you less of the nutritional ne-

cessities that today’s diets tend to

lack, such as fiber and antioxidants.

Dairy can confer health benefits,

but an optimal diet doesn’t require

dairy. Similarly, eggs make a better

breakfast than doughnuts, but

partly due to their cholesterol they

lose out to steel-cut oats with

mixed berries and nuts.

Fish:A 2010 study from Harvard

showed that cardiovascular disease

in women was reduced when pro-

tein from beans replaced protein

from meat and poultry—and even

fish. Salmon and other fish rich

in omega-3 fatty acids are good

if they displace red and pro-

cessed meat. But what about if

they substitute for beans and len-

tils? Recent studies suggest not, but

we need more long-term research

to be sure.

There is no one best diet. Good

diets can be low or high in fat or

carbohydrates, as long as they are

made up of wholesome foods, and

mostly plants. The quintessentially

healthy Mediterranean diet is high

in fat, most of it unsaturated, much

of it from olive oil, nuts, seeds and

avocado. But the famous diet of

long-lived residents of Okinawa is

low in fat because it is centered

around diverse vegetables, grains

and soybeans, with very limited

meat, poultry and fish.

If you adopt an eating pattern

that has stood the test of genera-

tions, you are almost certain to be

better off than with a diet intro-

duced as breaking news. We are

overdue in America for a grown-up

conversation about diet for health.

If you agree, pull up a chair.

Mr. Bittman is the author of

many food books, including

“How to Cook Everything.” Dr.

Katz, a specialist in preventive

medicine and public health, is

the founding director of the Yale-

Griffin Prevention Research Cen-

ter. This essay is adapted from

their new book, “How to Eat: All

Your Food and Diet Questions

Answered,” published by Hough-

ton Mifflin Harcourt.

‘H

ow should I

eat?” is a ques-

tion that many

Americans ask

daily. Almost

everyone seems confused, and no

wonder: Splashy new diet theories

appear all the time, often counter-

ing what we took to be true just

yesterday.

Consider breakfast, long touted

as the most important meal of the

day. Last year, a meta-analysis of

existing research on breakfast in

the British Medical Journal chal-

lenged the value of the meal, find-

ing that it may contribute to weight

gain. Indeed, in recent years, inter-

mittent fasting has become a popu-

lar weight-loss preoccupation and a

new justification for waiting until

lunchtime for the day’s first meal.

But now, of course, a new study in

the Journal of Clinical Endocrinol-

ogy and Metabolism has arrived to

suggest that having a big breakfast

actually helps to control weight—

evidence directly at odds with the

fashionable 16-hour fast.

So what to do in the morning?

That question is unlikely to be re-

solved, but luckily, it doesn’t have

to be. Eating a big or small break-

fast, or none at all, can be part of a

healthy overall dietary pattern—or

not. Nutritional health is about the

kinds of foods we eat, not just

their calorie count or when we eat

them. Weight is about energy bal-

ance: how the daily intake of fuel

that we metabolize aligns with our

body’s needs.

“Diet” is a word that has been

twisted to mean something that

someone invents for the fastest

possible weight loss. There’s always

a new one to “go on” for short-

term results. But what diet really

means is how you get the nutrition

you need throughout your life.

Before the 20th century, humans

knew what to eat: Little or no junk

(not much existed); animal prod-

ucts in moderation (far less was

available); and relatively unpro-

cessed plant foods in abundance.

That’s what almost all traditional

diets comprised, though there were

variations on this theme that we

might now call low-fat, low-carb,

vegan, pescatarian and so on.

In eras before that, it was even

simpler: Humans ate everything we

could find that wasn’t poisonous,

and as long as we found enough of

it in sufficient variety, we generally

did fine. Just as wild cats eat meat,

pandas eat bamboo and fish eat al-

gae, humans ate what was good for

them. Before there was science, we

knew how to do this, just as we

knew how to breathe air before an-

alyzing its composition.

But beginning in the 19th cen-

tury and accelerating through the

20th, mass production and mar-

keting of new foods began to

dominate. Science and industry

combined to find ways to create

shelf-stable, nutrient-poor, high-

calorie ultra-processed foods,

from cheeseburgers to sodas, as

well as almost anything you see in

a vending machine or next to the

checkout counter. These have gen-

erated a public health crisis that

requires us to relearn what every

human once knew from instinct

and experience.

The now-constant barrage of

headlines about nutrition science

can make us feel like we’re doing

everything wrong. Some people re-

spond by tuning out and continu-

ing to eat what’s familiar. Others

jump on the bandwagon of each

thrilling new diet that promises

everything. Most of these deliver

temporary results from severe re-

strictions that no one can main-

tain. Rapid weight loss is followed

by rapid regain, creating a

desperation that

makes people ea-

ger for the next promise of magic.

The truth is that all good diets

feature one or another balanced as-

semblage of wholesome, real

foods—mostly plants. Even now,

with our instincts suppressed, we

know what a good diet is. We pic-

ture chickpeas, not Doritos; pinto

beans, not jelly beans; broccoli, not

Bratwurst.

Yet the way we eat is the lead-

ing cause of premature death in

the U.S. today. Highly processed

foods, especially meats, and added

sugar and salt are all significant

contributors to heart disease and

other chronic killers. Even our

comparatively high health care

costs are partly due to the

damaging effects of un-

healthy eating and the

pharmaceuticals to treat

them.

So how to assess the daily bar-

rage of diet news? First, we need

some perspective on nutritional re-

search. New findings don’t usually

reverse what we knew before; they

add context, bit by bit. Second, we

should stop obsessing about partic-

ular nutrients—such as whether fat

is “good” or not. The short answer

is that unsaturated fats from nuts,

seeds, fruits and fish tend to be

beneficial, while satu-

rated fats, com-

monly found in

meat and dairy

and far too com-

monly consumed,

tend to be detrimental.

Fiber and added sugars

are simpler to sum up—

in our modern habits we

badly need more of the

Mass

production

and

marketing of

nutrient-poor

foods has

created

a health crisis.

In earlier

eras it was

simple:

If we avoided

what was

poisonous,

and found

enough

variety, we

were fine.