Doctor’s orders I love: “Eat your ice cream!”

by Carolyn Thomas     ♥    Heart Sisters (on Blue Sky) 

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is a bio-ethicist, an oncologist, a health policy expert and a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He’s also the author of many books – including one particular title launching this week that I’ve been waiting for all my life.

It’s called: “Eat Your Ice Cream:  Six Simple Rules For a Long and Healthy Life“

But in a professional field like medicine, whose members repeatedly warn their patients against consuming unhealthy processed foods including (of course!) ice cream, I had to wonder:“What’s the catch?” 

It may have all started with what Dr. Emanuel (among other academic researchers) call “The Wellness Industrial Complex”. Life, he writes, is “not a competition to live the longest” (despite what those tiresome “experts” peddling extreme longevity keep insisting) nor is wellness supposed to be difficult. He adds:

“Wellness should be an invisible part of a lifestyle that yields maximum health benefits with the least work.“

Meanwhile, Dr. Emanuel accuses this Wellness Industrial Complex of offering conflicting advice, “all while promising us more time to enjoy in the future – but it sure is demanding a lot of time right now.”

Author Brad Stulberg warned us years ago in his Medium essay called “The Wellness Industrial Complex is Making Us Sick that New Yorkers were paying to get hooked up to detox IVs. Online companies like Goop were selling “8 Crystals For Better Energy” and expensive detox-delivery meal kits promised “detox and beauty teas.” As Brad cautioned his readers:

“It seems that everyone is looking for a ‘cure’ to what ails them, which has led to a booming billion-dollar industry. The problem is that so much of what’s sold in the name of modern-day ‘wellness’ has little to no evidence of working. According to decades of academic research, real wellness is a lifestyle or state of being that goes beyond merely the absence of disease and into the realm of maximizing human potential.”

Once someone’s basic needs are met (e.g. food and shelter), scientists have found that wellness emerges from nourishing six interrelated dimensions of health:

1. – physical
2. – emotional
3. – cognitive
4. – social
5. – spiritual
6. – environmental

Nourishing these six dimensions of health, however, does not require us to buy expensive lotions, potions, or pills. Wellness — the kind that actually works — is simple: it’s about committing to basic practices, day in and day out, as individuals and communities.

During Dr. Emanuel’s TV interview with journalist Norah O’Donnell last week, the list of so-called Wellness Industrial Complex “must do’s” they found online ranged from the medically unproven to the wildly impractical – including absurd detox suggestions like the goofy endorsements of ‘treatments’ like testicle tanning, teen blood transfusions, or vaginal steaming.

Dr. Emanuel warns against“information coming at us like a firehose, increasingly spewed by hucksters who have amassed millions of social media followers (and dollars) by promising supposed miracle treatments using medical-sounding language.”

In the same interview, Dr. Emanuel repeated his book title’s unusual New Year’s resolution advice, the kind we thought we’d never hear from any physician: “Eat your ice cream!”

“Ice cream will make you happy, and that’s very important,” he explained.

Then Norah asked him: “Why would I live longer eating ice cream?”

Why indeed? Dr. Emanuel’s answer:

“Ice cream is a good dairy product; it’s got protein, its saturated fats are in a globule, so it doesn’t affect you as much as saturated fats in red meat and other things. Plus, you typically do it socially with someone else. And you know, being happy is a very important part of living a long time.”

By now, you may not be surprised to learn that Dr. Emanuel is not only a lover of ice cream, but he is also an award-winning chocolatier.

Here’s how the busy (and fun!) doctor announced on his Linked In page the exciting news about the prize awarded for his 65% Dark Chocolate + Tart Cherry Bar (affectionately dubbed “The Zeke Bar” by his chocolate-making partners at Askinosie Chocolate):

“The BIG NEWS: The Zeke Bar won Bronze at the 2025 International Chocolate Awards! After decades of bioethics and health policy work, I finally have an award that rewards not my mind, but my taste (and an honor that maybe my grandkids will care about). It’s tremendous to receive this acknowledgment for our collective hard work, and in turn, to share it with the farmers we partner with directly to source these amazing cocoa beans. And a HUGE thank you to our amazing community for your steadfast support!!

Coincidentally, while I was suffering through the most brutal side effects of my chemotherapy treatments, my friends must have intuitively sensed those magical properties of their gifts of ice cream (thanks especially to Irene, Vivienne and Lynne!)

Meanwhile, I’ve given careful thought to Dr. Emanuel’s expert advice, and I now realize that I’ve been clearly falling behind in my lifetime ice cream enjoyment quota. How about you?

Q: What’s your favourite ice cream flavour?

♥

NOTE FROM CAROLYN:   I wrote more about doctor-patient communication (and much more) in my book, “A Woman’s Guide to Living with Heart Disease”. You can ask for it at your local library or favourite bookshop, or order it online (paperback, hardcover or e-book) at Amazon–  or order it directly from my publisher, Johns Hopkins University Press (use their code HTWN to save 30% off the list price).