A book a day keeps the spare tyre away: Israel’s Peres

Feeding your brain rather than your belly is the best way to avoid piling on the pounds, Israeli President Shimon Peres said on Thursday in an exclusive interview with AFP.

“Everybody eats three times a day. You eat three times a day and you become fat,” said the 89-year-old leader, who said he sleeps just four or five hours a night and gets up well before dawn.

“If you will read three times a day, you will become wise. Better to be wise than fat,” he said.

His current diet includes a helping of “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, a portion of “On China” by Henry Kissinger, wrapped up with a slice of Bernard Lewis’s “Notes on a Century.”

And his latest discovery is a book of poetry called “Land of the Sad Passionfruit” by Arab-Israeli poet Marwan Makhoul.