The secret of feeling and looking younger than your years is really not a secret at all. It's not some witch's brew or alchemist's formula to be guarded jealously from the eyes of the unbeliever or the hands of the uninitiated. Possibly the common-sense simplicity of staying younger than your years is what keeps it from being readily accepted by the great mass of our people, since we are forever inclined to depreciate simple truths.

We might go so far as to define the secret of prolonging youth and keeping youthfully fit as a kind of dietary golden rule: "Do unto your body as you would that it do unto you." Prehistoric man instinctively followed this dietary golden rule. So did most of the ancient peoples, and some of our grandparents, while a few peoples on earth today still prac­tice it.

During my recent tour of South American countries, I met some remarkable oldsters with a "talent" for living long and vigorously. In Uruguay and Argentina I noticed an amaz­ing number of older persons whose pep and stamina was noth­ing short of miraculous, compared to that of the average American of the same age.

I was first impressed by these energetic older people in Montevideo, the completely modern, thriving capital of Uruguay. I was amazed by the unusual number of older persons stepping briskly about their business in the city streets as though life was important to them, and there were many things to be accomplished.

During my stay, I mentioned to my Uruguayan host what I had noticed about the uncommon number of vigorous, young-looking, older persons taking part in the city's daily activities. At first he was unimpressed by my observation, shrugging it off as of no scientific significance. But then he began thinking more deeply on the subject when I mentioned that in the more tropical parts of Brazil I had been singularly impressed by the lack of elderly persons to be seen on the streets.

"You're right," he conceded at length. "My country— Argentina, too—does seem to have more physically fit older persons than any other country in South America. Why, I wonder? Climate, perhaps?"

"More probably a matter of diet," was my answer, remem­bering the high-starch diets of tropical Brazil as compared to the meals I had noted being set before the Uruguayans in the city's splendid restaurants: plates containing liberal portions of meat, roasted or broiled; bowls generously heaped with green salads dressed with olive oil; and trays of tempt­ingly arranged fresh fruits. I had marveled at Uruguayan digestions that could eat with gusto foods and portions which ordinarily would have "appalled" the average Ameri­can of similar age and circumstances.

It's a pleasure to remember the youthful glow of mind and body enjoyed by the grandmother of my host, a charming woman in her late seventies. At the magnificent beach, Punta del Este, she swam in the surf along with her grand­children and great-grandchildren! And after the traditionally late dinner of Latin countries, she joined in the dancing with the same eagerness as her great-granddaughters. Nor, when the music had sounded a tango or a waltz, did her partners seek her out through any sense of duty, for this wonderful little old lady, with her extraordinary pep and poise, danced as gracefully as any of the young girls on the floor. I love to remember her, for she is what so many of our own wives, mothers and grandmothers could be at her age.

In Argentina, on an estancia not far from Buenos Aires, I had another close-up view of those oldsters whose appear­ances and abilities belied their calendar years.

My host was a wealthy Argentinian, educated in England, whose estancia was devoted to raising blooded horses for racing and for polo. His pastures extended for thousands of acres, and across them roamed large numbers of the finest horseflesh I've ever seen—and some of the youngest "old men." Naturally, such a widespread establishment required many hired workers—men to tend the corrals, to ride herd on the grazing horses and to break and train the spirited young animals.

Picturesque as was their garb (narrow-rimmed hats held on by a leather thong under the chin, black shirts, four-inch-wide leather belts studded with silver, blouse-legged trousers called bombachas stuffed into riding boots, and enormous, wicked-looking spurs), I was most attracted by their faces. For it was only by their faces that I could tell which were the older gauchos, since all of them, young and old alike, performed the same arduous tasks. There were a dozen or more Gauchos on that estancia who were either nearing seventy or had already passed it.

"You're to be commended for keeping on those older fellows," I remarked to my host. "In my country they would long since have been replaced or pensioned off."

"Not at all," came his quick reply, "I'm very lucky to have them. They are the backbone of my estancia. Most of them were with my grandfather. My worry is what I shall do without them. But that probably won't be for another ten years or so."

"Surely you don't expect those old fellows to spend all day in the saddle when they're past eighty! Why, they must be slowing down even now."

"You think so?" He grinned at me and winked. "Bueno, tomorrow we'll ride with Justino, the oldest of the lot ... he must be well past seventy. Then, after we return, tell me whether you still doubt that Justino and the others will be around ten years from now!"

The next morning my host and I were in the saddle before dawn, along with the past-seventy Justino and two of his colleagues. Our destination was an estancia some twenty-five miles away where we were to deliver a herd of horses.

Now, a Gaucho pony knows only two speeds—stop and full speed ahead. Rarely are they walked, and a canter and a trot are unknown gaits to them.

I am accustomed to an exhausting amount of physical ac­tivity every day, and it takes a lot to bring me to the point where I actually sense physical fatigue. But I freely confess that at the end of that day in the saddle—we rode close to fifty miles cross-country between dawn and dusk—I was more than glad to crawl into bed embarrassingly soon after dinner. Yet down in the Gauchos' quarters I heard Justino and his confreres playing the guitar, singing and later enjoying a game of cards until long after I had gone to bed.

I no longer had any doubts that Justino and the other old Gauchos would still be around to do a hard day's riding ten years from then. Their vigor, agility and capacity for per­forming a full day's hard work was nothing short of phe­nomenal.

Nor were they the only such older horsemen I saw on the pampas. Later, in my travels across the fertile Argentine plains, I encountered many more Gauchos whose actual calendar years would have made them long since eligible for "social security" in this country.

Before leaving the estancia near Buenos Aires, I took a meal with Justino and the other Gauchos down at their quarters. A whole sheep (sometimes it was a side of beef) was roasted in the skin over an open fire. When the meat was done to a turn, nicely browned on the outside but tender and juicy on the inside, large chunks were hacked off by each man with the long-bladed knife he wears at the back of his broad belt. These large chunks of meat, followed by second and third helpings until nothing was left but the carcass, constituted the entire meal—no potatoes, no bread, no pie. Nothing but meat, followed by a gourd of the brew made from the green herb called mate. Yet this was not an excep­tional meal with them—it was the diet they followed three times daily, year in, year out. Meat is the sustenance of these people of the pampas countries—Uruguay and Argentina.

In the larger cities, of course, with the coming of American and European eating habits, more and more sweets and starches are being consumed. But the old-timers and the younger people living away from the foreign influences of the cities depend on meat alone for nourishment, plus repeated gourds of mate sipped at various times during their long day.

Meat, of course, is another way of saying protein. For meat provides the highest type, most complete protein.

Hence, with a super-abundance of high-type protein in his diet, the average Argentinian or Uruguayan instinctively provides an uninterrupted supply of repair material that keeps his body cells in good working order. That is why he does not "age" rapidly as do his starch-eating brothers to the north. These men of the pampas retain their youthful vigor and stamina long past the age when our older persons are thought of as semi-invalids.

"All very interesting," you may comment, "but is it good nutrition, this meat-and-maté diet of your Gaucho?"

To which I hasten to reply with a big, loud "Yes!" Far better nutrition than is to be found on the expensively itemized menus of the finest epicurean restaurants in our cosmopolitan centers, with their dozens of tempting dishes from which to choose—most of them too starchy, too sweet or overcooked.

Good nutrition is not a matter of variety or a full pocket-book. Careful selection and intelligent preparation are the foundation of good nutrition. "Good" foods actually cost less than poor ones. Many an expensively provisioned table is tragically poor in nutritional values because o£ unwise selec­tion and wasteful preparation.

The Argentine Gaucho with his meat-and-maté will never be a nutritional pauper. And this is a lot more than can be said for about 99 per cent of us Americans who have a seem­ingly limitless choice of starchy, artificial, devitalized foods with which to tempt our jaded palates and starve our pre­maturely aging bodies.

Remember, it is the nutritional pauper who early loses his vitality and glow of youth. Any person who surfeits his body with carbohydrates and starves it of proteins is a nutritional pauper.

Protein is the outstanding food element that determines whether you look and feel like thirty at fifty—or fifty at thirty. Whether your muscles cooperate, or cringe. Whether age is a matter of feeling, or years. Protein is your best friend at mealtime.

You'll meet protein in several different guises later on. But regardless of the form in which it appears on your plate, protein will be right in there pitching for you, striking out old age and pepping up slack muscles. Before you can hope to Eat-and-Grow-Younger, you must make a mealtime com­panion of protein, your "youth restorer" food.

When I first began lecturing across the nation, there ap­peared in one of my eastern audiences a little old lady who was brought down the aisle in a wheelchair by her nurse. Later, from talking with this determined elderly woman, (whom I shall call Grandma X), I learned that she had severely sclerosed (hardened) arteries, high blood pressure and a diagnosis of "coronary thrombosis." In brief, she had been told by her doctor that it was only a "matter of time." But the will of Grandma X to live was stronger than her weakened body.

"There must be a way to lick this thing," she told me, "and I'm going to find it! You've given me the first real hope. To­morrow I throw out all that soft pap they've been poking down me for years. I'm going to have all the meat, and cheese, and eggs I want."

About six years later Grandma X stopped me one morning on a Los Angeles street.

"It worked!" was her greeting. "I've never felt so good in all my life. No more wheelchair for me! I came out here by bus. And I get around where I want to go all by myself." Then she went on to explain that she had always wanted to have "breakfast at Sardi's," so one day she said to her­self: "What're you waiting for, you old ninny? You'll never be any younger." So she purchased her bus ticket, crossed the continent—much to the horror of her grandchildren— and was having the time of her life in California. Later I learned that she had decided to stay on the Coast and was an active member of an elderly persons' club devoted to having a good time.

Can anyone doubt that in the case of Grandma X the humble "secret" of how to eat-and-grow-younger worked real magic?

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