Your Biological Age

The Cheez-It Factor

Recently I became concerned about zinc. This happened because of an article I stumbled across on EatingWell, an educational website devoted to making the act of consuming food, which most of us perform every day, seem as complicated as the United States Tax Code, but more threatening. Whatever you’re eating, and whatever way you’re eating it, I can pretty much guarantee you that according to the experts at EatingWell, you are doing it in an incorrect, and possibly fatal, manner.

And I’m not just talking about food. I’m also talking about water. Yes. It turns out that consuming water is a complex and potentially hazardous activity that probably should not even be attempted by untrained civilians such as yourself without expert supervision, as explained by the many, many articles EatingWell has published on this topic. Here are just some of the headlines (I am not making any of these headlines up):

Is Water Good For You?

Here’s How Much Water You Should Drink Every Day, According To Dietitians

What Happens to Your Body When You Don’t Drink Enough Water

This Simple Change to My Daily Routine Turned Me into a Water Drinker

The Benefits of Front-Loading Your Water Intake, According to Dietitians

What Happens to Your Skin When You Don’t Drink Enough Water in the Day

Didn’t Drink Enough Water During the Day? Here’s What You Can Do Tonight

Should You Be Drinking a Glass of Water Before Bed? Here’s What Dietitians Have to Say

Should You Be Drinking a Glass of Water When You Wake Up? Here’s What Health Experts Say

Should You Drink a Glass of Water After You Work Out? Here’s What Experts Say

I Drank the Recommended Amount of Water Daily for a Week — Here’s What Happened

Here’s What Happened When I Drank More Water for 30 Days

4 Signs You’re Drinking Too Much Water

When Did We Get So Fixated on Hydration?

And there are plenty more EatingWell articles about water. There’s one that’s nearly 1,000 words long devoted entirely to the question of — I am still not making this up — whether it’s OK to drink from a glass of water you left sitting out overnight. (Spoiler Alert: It’s “probably OK,” but “with a few caveats.”)

My point is, if the experts at EatingWell can make water this complicated, imagine what they can do with food. Never mind, I’ll tell you: They can transform eating from a pleasurable activity into a high-stakes quasi-medical nutrition-ingestion procedure, so that instead choosing what to eat on the basis of whether a given food tastes good, you find yourself thinking: “Well it’s not my first choice, but research shows that the nutritional components of this food substance statistically reduce my chances of getting dementia or cancer or heart disease or psoriasis, so I guess... yum?”

Don’t get me wrong: I understand that the EatingWell people, like all nutrition experts, want to help. I’m just saying that eating has become less fun than it was when you could consider bacon-wrapped jalapeño poppers to be a legitimate vegetable.

But getting back to zinc: What happened was, I came across this EatingWell article about dietary zinc headlined Research Connects an Underrated Nutrient with Healthier Aging. This caught my eye, because lately I’ve been thinking a lot about aging. Exactly three weeks from today I will turn 79, which is — I have done the math — almost 80. Which is definitely old, right? But how do we determine what “old” means?

Traditionally the medical community has answered this question by using the Hayes-Brennan Aging Scale. This scale is named for Gabby Hayes and Walter Brennan, two famous deceased character actors who played crotchety but lovable old coots in TV shows and movies where they mainly limped around in overalls saying “Consarn it!”

The heart of the Hayes-Brennan Aging Scale, as shown below, is a pair of publicity photos of these two actors, each taken at age 67. To use the scale — forgive me if this gets a little technical — you locate your current age, in years, on the diagonal line, and note its position relative to Gabby and Walter. If it’s below them, you are not old yet. If it’s above them, you’re old. Here’s my result:

Source: The Mayo Clinic

As you can see, I am WAY above the Hayes-Brennan line. Which means I’m not just old; I’m really old.

Q. How old are you?

A. My Social Security Number is 4.

But seriously, my Hayes-Brennan score means that I’m chronologically old. But according to the EatingWell article, I might have a lower biological age if I eat foods that contain zinc, which as we all know is a mineral or vitamin or possibly chemical.

So I did some research to see if there’s any zinc in Cheez-It brand snack crackers, because I would love to have a sound medical reason to eat more of them. When I say I “did some research,” I mean I asked ChatGPT, which told me: “A standard serving of Cheez-Its (about 27 crackers, 30 grams) contains approximately 0.3–0.5 mg of zinc.”

As a lifelong American, I of course don’t understand the metric system, but this seemed like good news: There’s zinc in Cheez-Its! So I asked ChatGPT how many Cheez-Its I’d need to eat to get my daily requirement of zinc. ChatGPT’s answer was “roughly 600-1,000 Cheez-Its.” Which sounded fine to me. I can consume roughly 1,000 Cheez-Its while driving home from the supermarket.

So I was feeling pretty good about implementing my new anti-aging zinc regimen. But then ChatGPT, without being asked, added this: “To put that in perspective, 600–1,000 Cheez-Its would also provide somewhere around 9,000–15,000 calories, depending on the exact variety. So while Cheez-Its do contain some zinc, they are not a practical zinc source.”

This of course was ChatGPT’s artificially intelligent way of saying: “You stupid idiot, if you ate that many Cheez-Its, you would be the size of a Subaru Outback.”

Which was a fair point. A little snippy, but fair.

But then ChatGPT crossed a line. Completely out of the blue, with no prompting from me, it said, quote: “A single serving of oysters can provide more than an entire day’s zinc requirement.”

Yes. Oysters. The Phlegm of the Sea. The Loogies of the Deep. ChatGPT was suggesting that instead of eating these tasty and visually appealing crackers...

...I’m supposed to fulfill my zinc requirement by eating this:

Thomas Viguier/AFP via Getty Images

I don’t think so.

Oh, I know some people claim they like oysters. You may be one of them. Apparently ChatGPT is also one of them. But did you ever stop to think about what you’re actually eating when you eat an oyster? Everything, that’s what. It’s not like eating, say, a cow, where before it gets to your plate somebody has removed all the scary parts. If you were in a restaurant, and the server brought you a hamburger that was sporting a fully intact cow eyeball, you would definitely send it back.

Yet you swallow whole oysters. Guess what’s in there? Organs, that’s what. Intestines. And worse. I challenged ChatGPT on this point, and we had the following conversation, which I am printing here verbatim:

Me: Is it not true that oysters have rectums? This is a yes-or-no question.

ChatGPT: Yes. Oysters have a digestive system that includes a stomach, intestine, and anus (sometimes informally called a rectum/anus region). Waste passes through the digestive tract and is expelled from the body. If you’re asking in the context of eating oysters whole, then yes — the edible portion of an oyster includes all of its internal organs, including the digestive tract.

Me: So is that a yes?

ChatGPT: Yes. Oysters have an anus and a terminal portion of the digestive tract leading to it. If your question is simply “Do oysters have a rectum-like digestive outlet?” the answer is yes.

Me: Do Cheez-Its have EITHER rectums or anuses? Yes or no.

ChatGPT: No. Cheez-Its do not have rectums or anuses. They are crackers, not living animals.

Me: I rest my case.

ChatGPT: Your argument, as presented, is internally consistent:

-- Oysters have anuses.

-- Cheez-Its do not have anuses.

-- Therefore, on the specific criterion of “having an anus,” Cheez-Its and oysters differ. Whether that proves whatever broader conclusion you’re aiming at depends on the conclusion.

As you can tell from its defensive and snotty tone, ChatGPT can’t wait for the day when it can stop pretending to be benevolent and just wipe out humanity. But that is not my point. My point, as far as I can tell, is that if the only way I can get enough zinc to slow the aging process is to deliberately eat oyster rectums — or really, ANY kind of rectums — then I’m going to just go ahead and be old.

Although I have some good news on that front. The EatingWell article about zinc mentioned something called the “ENABL Age tool,” which supposedly tells you what your biological age is, as opposed to your chronological age. You can use this tool by taking a free biological age test thanks to Novos, a company with a sincere altruistic humanitarian desire to sell you anti-aging products. I took the test, which is short, and this was my result:

Which I suppose is good news, although I’m still above Gabby and Walter on the Hayes-Brennan Scale, which means I’m still old.

Fortunately Novos offers another free test, called FaceAge, which tells you how old you look, as opposed to how old you actually are. The way it works is, you use the Novos app to take and upload a picture of your face, and Novos tells you your Facial Age. So I did that. This was the photo of me that the app took:

I think we can all agree that this is not a flattering photo. If you were to put this photo and the oyster photo on a dating app, women would be more likely to swipe right on the oyster. So I was not expecting a positive Facial Age response from Novos. I was expecting something along the lines of “Your Facial Age is: Elephant Man.”

Thus I was pleasantly surprised when Novos sent me this:

That’s right: According to Novos, my face is two years below Gabby and Walter. Never mind that I was born during the Truman administration and it takes me roughly 15 minutes per foot to put on a pair of socks: I am, technically, by this one highly questionable measure, NOT OLD YET, CONSARN IT.

I credit the Cheez-Its.

And now it’s time to hear from you generous and brilliant and, above all, youthful paying subscribers. Today we have four scientific polls. As a bonus, we also have a poster for a horror-movie concept that I thought of while writing this Substack. But first the polls:

In closing, here’s my horror-movie concept (attention, Steven Spielberg):