When I am in the mountains, I eat simple food in the huts: thick soups made with coarse grains, beans, potatoes, and cabbage, boiled sausages, and bulky slices of hard, dark bread. I wash this down with red wine and a lot of it. And each morning I produce hefty turds in the peace and quiet of stone deserts under the ragged peaks. The only thing a dietician or a nutritionist would miss in my diet is the daily toil: six to twelve hours of strenuous physical effort each and every day. That is the missing ingredient of every good diet. Perhaps that is the missing ingredient of every good life, too.