Plants under stress produce polyphenols like resveratrol and quercetin that activate SIRT1, a longevity enzyme. Eating these stressed plants signals adversity to your body, triggering protective responses. Dark leafy greens and broccolini with olive oil are rich sources.
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Why should we eat stressed plants, and which is your favorite plant? Oh, well, so the xenohormesis hypothesis is what you're talking about. The idea sprung from the fact that resveratrol and a whole bunch of plant polyphenols, which you probably know of— quercetin, fisetin, all these ones that are now— other scientists are claiming credit for— we showed back in the early 2000s could activate SIRT1, the enzyme. So how's that possible, and why is it that aspirin is so good? And most of the pharmaceuticals, at least in the 20th century, were derived from natural molecules. What is going on? It's not just coincidence, we think. And we think that we've evolved to sense stress in the plant world so that we have a heads up that we're gonna run out of food and we hunker down and get ready for starvation. So when you eat stressed plants, what we see is that the high level of polyphenols in a stressed plant will give you that signal of adversity. And I'm all about adversity mode, as you know. So I look for xenohormetic plants. Serena would say, eat the rainbow. So when you go for colored plants, dark leafy greens, colored vegetables. It's great. My favorite one right now is broccolini, very lightly steamed. Olive oil and lemon. That's a good one. Yeah. Or just salt and pepper. But olive oil definitely is another one on there. Olive oil is full of these polyphenols if you— especially if you get the really bitter ones. But yeah, it's good. It's good.
