My name is Darya Rose and I am the creator of Summer Tomato.

I’m also a neuroscience Ph.D and the author of Foodist. I currently live in Portland, Oregon (via SF and NYC) with my husband Kevin Rose, our two girls Zelda and Nova, and our insanely adorable mini labradoodle, Toaster.

I spend most of my time thinking and writing about food, health and science. I eat amazing things daily and haven’t even considered “going on a diet” since 2007. I hover about 5-8 pounds below my original goal weight without much effort and am in better shape than I was at 20, which is totally awesome.

In 2010, I completed my Ph.D in neuroscience at UC San Francisco––my diploma is signed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. A little over a year before graduating I started writing about food, health and weight loss here at Summer Tomato, and by the time I graduated I had a new career.

My writing has been featured in several well known publications, and is frequently mentioned by many more. I received my bachelor’s degree in Molecular and Cell Biology from UC Berkeley, and was recognized as one of the top students in my graduating class of 2003. I also play Zelda.

As you can see, I’m a total geek.

For 10 years I studied basic science in labs at UC Berkeley and UCSF. I have worked extensively with both human subjects and experimental animals, using a wide range of techniques to explore the basic biological functions of the brain.

Originally my plan was to go into medicine (well, after I switched majors from English literature to biology in my 4th year of college––I graduated in 6 years) because I wanted to help people with diseases of the mind. However after a little digging I learned that there were no cures and very few effective treatments for the neurodegenerative diseases I was interested in. I then questioned how satisfied I would be in medicine and opted instead to go into research.

Although many brilliant people are making key discoveries in health every year, ultimately I realized science wasn’t the answer I was looking for either––at least not in the way I had envisioned. This is because in large part the questions I hoped to answer have already been solved.

In my quest to get to the bottom of my lingering weight problems (this was 2006), I discovered a rich body of scientific literature on how to prevent and sometimes cure almost all of the major diseases that plague modern society, including many of the neurodegenerative diseases that got me interested in science in the first place.

It turns out the answer isn’t surgery or drugs, it’s food.

But to understand how I got to this answer, you need to know a little about my past.