All in Moderation

Don’t be a schmuck — avoid self-destructive risks
Talk to people — cultivate family, friends and other social relationships
Expand your mind — stay mentally sharp
Eat your ice cream — consume healthy food and drinks
Move it! — exercise well and regularly
Sleep like a baby — get the rest you need.

So go Ezekiel Emanuel’s 6 prescriptions for longterm wellness, which seem reasonable enough. Emanuel has an impressively lengthy resume as an oncologist and bioethicist at several Ivy League universities. He also worked on the Obamacare Act and thus helped to form public health policy, so his prescriptions have some credibility.

All doctors are probably used to people asking them for medical advice in social settings, but Emanuel found more and more people asking for advice about ‘wellness’ rather than a disease. What diet was he on? What supplements did he take? What was his exercise routine?

He doesn’t seem to have minded the questions, although his interrogators were probably disappointed by the answers (none, none, whatever form of exercise he enjoyed the most). What started irking him was all the very dubious ‘wellness’ information out on the internet, being spouted by people with no medical expertise — ‘influencers’, tech bros, and the like. This book appears to have been written as a research-based, personal experience, and as a common-sense counter to the nutcases. (No apologies for that last word. There’s one tech bro who injects himself with his son’s blood on a regular basis, aiming for eternal youth).

To be clear, these are personal prescriptives, meaning that they are advice for what a single person can change about their lives for better health. Obviously, this is more practical for some than others. Someone who works hard and earns lots of money can afford organic raspberries and might have the luxury of outsourcing daily stuff so that they have time to exercise. Someone who works hard in a factory or warehouse earns much less, and has to buy groceries and cook food and deal with childcare in their off-work time, and cannot afford the fresh fruits, and is probably too exhausted to formally exercise. There is nothing in this book about food deserts, or health insurance … Emanuel’s advice to someone who injures themself during exercise is to make sure to rest and recover fully before throwing themselves back into the fray, obviously a possibility only for those who have non-physical jobs or have paid leave. So you won’t find any social or political proposals for improving American health in this book.

Ok, so this is a book for the upper middle class. Even so, it is blinkered, in that it takes very little account of variation between ethnic groups. Sunscreen is recommended very highly

Randomized and controlled studies in Australia, Norway and other countries show that clothing and sunscreen (SPF over 30) reduces the melanoma risk by 50%

But what about black and brown-skinned people?

Dairy products are also recommended. What about the vast Asian populations who are lactose intolerant? He does especially recommend yogurt and kefir rather than milk, but this is because he prefers them. He seems unaware of any non Caucasian populations. I found this rather disappointing from someone who was working on health policy for all Americans.

Even with these limitations, though, Emanuel’s prescriptions are quite sensible. The first (Don’t be a Schmuck) suggests stopping smoking and vaping, no heavy drinking, avoiding contact sports played without helmets, not driving drunk, getting vaccinated, and having cancer screenings as one gets older. The solid research data to support the advice is laid out for the reader, and accompanied by logical arguments for moderation: don’t bother with extreme measures that will add at most a few months to your lifespan.

Emanuel uses his own parents as the example for point 2 — the importance of social connections. His own family is clearly very sociable by nature, so it is not surprising that one of his accomplished brothers (Rahm) is a politician and the other (Ari) a Hollywood agent. He takes note of introverts too, and has data showing that even moderate increases in social connection provide large benefits in emotional wellness. And surely we all want to be happy as well as healthy and long lived.

To stave off dementia, don’t retire.

A controversial prescription, he admits. It is obvious from his book that he is one of those driven people who work long hours but still somehow run 20 miles, do yoga, and make pancakes for his children, somehow. He also loves the many facets of his jobs (yes, plural) which offer flexibility and mental stimulation. His point, that people often lose mental engagement and challenge after retirement, is reasonable for white collar workers with interesting jobs. For blue collar works with tedious and physical jobs, he shows data that they actually do better after retirement.

Sleep and exercise also come into play here, but for many working people, a job is detrimental to both.

The title of this book — Eat your Icecream — sounds contradictory to most diet plans, but what he goes on to say is that occasional splurges are just fine, and that soda and over processed foods are far worse. But it is clear this advice is directed towards those who can afford to eat well.

So now you have this summary, you don’t need to read the book.
Just kidding. If you’re the type of person who believes in sensible research-supported strategies for living, you probably do all this already. If you’re struggling to, say, exercise, he has some motivational tips, but I got the sense that he didn’t really understand how anyone else could possibly need motivation, since he didn’t need it himself.
But if you find yourself arguing with anti-vaxxers or fad dieters, the book is an easy read that gives you lots of good ammunition for such arguments.

Eat Your Ice Cream: Six Simple Rules for a Long and Healthy Life
Ezekiel J.Emanuel

W.W.Norton & Co, 2026