Guess how much Google futurist Ray Kurzweil spends on food that will make him live forever?
And like Peter Thiel and other Silicon Valley titans who have taken up the age-old search for immortality, he thinks he can.
Kurzweil is 67 now, but thanks to some unusual habits, he says his "biological age" is in the late 40s.
These habits begin with eating.
According to Caroline Daniel of the Financial Times, who just had breakfast with him, Kurzweil used to eat 250 nutritional pills a day. Now, thanks to advances in food science and pill technology, he's down to 100. These pills include supplements for "heart health, eye health, sexual health, and brain health."
(Kurzweil is no fool, so if any of these pills actually do anything, we'd be grateful if he could share specifics.)
After he downs the morning ration of 30 pills, Kurzweil settles down to breakfast:
- berries
- dark chocolate infused with espresso
- smoked salmon and mackerel
- vanilla soy milk
- stevia
- porridge
- green tea
This selection, apparently, emphasizes "healthy carbs." It also apparently "fills you up with fewer calories."
The breakfast portion of the Immortality Diet doesn't sound too wacky: Most people could probably choke it down. But the pill portion makes the diet more exclusive. Specifically, it makes it available only to the few folks around who have the means and desire to invest "a few thousand dollars a day" in supplemental nutrition.
"A few thousand dollars a day" adds up to about $1 million a year.
That's about $1.6 million a year of pre-tax income devoted to nutritional supplements alone!
Living forever clearly isn't for everyone.