When you are a billionaire, and 83 years-old, and driven by a personal crusade to change the health of the people you meet, social graces take a back seat. Recently, while Dole Food owner David H. Murdock was talking to a contractor about a construction job, he stopped the conversation short by telling the man he was too fat and would die before the job was finished. Murdock offered the man an extra $100,000 dollars bonus if he lost 60 pounds. They eventually agreed on 30 pounds. Murdock wasn't always that outspoken about nutrition and health-- the death of his wife to cancer changed him. He came to the belief that it was years of eating a diet high in saturated fats that led to her death. He became a vegetarian after losing her, and rather blunt with anyone he meets now who seems to be allowing themselves to be overweight or to eat unhealthy.
It is difficult to be too offended by his brashness and lack of diplomacy, considering his history of loss and subsequent motivation. In Kannapolis, North Carolina, Murdock is putting his money where his mouth is in having a 350-acre biotechnology research complex built to advance scientific knowledge about the role of food and nutrition in human health. Another project in Westlake Village is the California Wellbeing Institute scheduled to open in November and designed to be a combination Four Seasons luxury resort, conference center and nutrition-counseling school.
In the event you never meet Murdock in person, it is reported he likes to suggest Dole's Encyclopedia of Foods to people he does meet -- just in case you are curious what a man who plans to live to be 125 recommends as a good read.
