Mr friend Dr. BG of Animal Pharm, in including an addendum comment to my Oprah Diet post, suggested I take on Steve Jobs' health issues.

I was set to do that, but I backed off because reports seem to demonstrate a relationship between his pancreatic cancer and subsequent surgery, to what's going on now. So, while Oprah Winfrey is clearly a victim of diet-induced metabolic syndrome, I can't be so certain about Jobs.

There is this, however:

Steve Jobs' Diet Secrets

And while Apple employees eat healthy, Jobs takes it to an extreme, one employee says, eating dark green vegetables such as broccoli and asparagus, grilled or steamed. Jobs has been a vegetarian for years but his enthusiasm for green may have taken on an extra dimension since his brush with cancer. Jobs has surgery in 2004 to treat pancreatic cancer, and, again, earlier this year, according to The New York Times, to address "a problem that was contributing to a loss of weight." The veg-heavy diet, however, likely will not help him pack on any pounds. "No wonder he's cranky all the time," one Apple insider says.

Modern ignorance, coupled with audacious arrogance, I'd say.  Recipe for disaster. It'd guess that for a guy like Jobs, it's even more unlikely that he would come to adopt a sensible — natural, Paleolithic — diet like an average Joe would. After all he seems to have bought into the environmentalism catechism lock, stock, & barrel  – though I have no objections to Apple trying to manufacture as "clean" as they can. (Notice, however, that it's the same religious-like pitting of man against his own nature I talked about in the Oprah post, inducing [unearned] guilt, and then demanding repentance in the form of sacrifice — i.e., crappy boring food, cardio drudgery, driving sardine cans, wasting time separating trash into bins, and other innumerable sacrifices so as to reinforce the "authority" of those demanding repentance and sacrifice.)

And, hey, Apple is now mainstream. It's not really "think different," anymore (disclosure: 20 year hard-core PC user who switched to Mac over a year ago and will never look back).

Here's what I'm pretty sure of: if that's his diet, it's not helping him in the slightest, and it's far more likely to be exacerbating the situation than doing anything to help.

Then there's this, from Byron Richards, a nutritionist:

STEVE JOBS' WASTING-AWAY HEALTH PROBLEM

Seemingly sound nutritional advice, but I say: eat a healthful diet first, then see where you are. And, we know what the most healthful diet is. It's a diet with plenty of meat, fish, fowl, natural fats, vegetables, fruits, and nuts. Get off all grain products, refined vegetable / grain oils, sugar, artificial sweeteners, and all processed foods. Consider getting off dairy (milk, mostly), too, if it makes you feel better as it did for me; or, as I do, use butter, cream, and bits of cheese as spice. Cook your own food over 95% of the time, and keep it real.

Addendum: You know, there's one thing that might get Steve to view his health issues vis-a-vis a proper diet from an evolutionary, Paleolithic, pre-agricultural perspective. I've often heard him say, in reference to a new product "when you get your hands on it." Whether he meant it explicitly or not, what I always took from that is, hey: our products are designed with the hardware interface (human hands) in mind.

Evaluation of diet ought to be no less complicated.