When health writers were asked to a private lunch with Jane Fonda last summer, one of the journalists panicked. "I have to be thin to meet Jane Fonda," thought the columnist, who then proceeded to binge compulsively on bagels. "Instead of eating one, I ate three." An understandable lapse for mere mortals summoned into the presence of the U.S. Goddess of Fitness. But the nervous nosher was a no less exalted figure: Jane Brody, the nation's High Priestess of Health. At the meeting of the two unrestrained Janes, though, it all worked out true to form. Brody, after politely complimenting Fonda on her latest exercise tape ("It's not boring"), quickly got down to business. "How come you always put such gorgeous women in your videotapes?" she asked. "Can't you find any that ordinary people could identify with? I tried the stretches in your first tape and couldn't do them; I'd break in half. You should take a look at underwear. I can't find a leotard to run in with a good built-in bra . . ."
Nervy attacks, not attacks of nerves, are the usual hallmark of the brassy dynamo who has been successfully lecturing and hectoring the American public for the past decade. Her weekly "Personal Health" column for the New York Times is syndicated by more than 100 papers across the country. Two of her books have been best sellers, including the recent, recipe-laden Jane Brody's Good Food Book, which goes into paperback next spring. She speaks throughout the country, making about 50 appearances a year. Last week the writer took to television as the host of a PBS series of ten half hours called Good Health from Jane Brody's Kitchen.
All that activity has been good to her. A millionaire at 45, Brody is a testament to her own blend of scientific findings and personal experiences. Her taut 5-ft., 105-lb. frame radiates energy. Her loud voice spews words at a rat-a-tat pace. Even the salt-and-pepper curls around her face seem to crackle with vitality. A few years ago in New York City, the pint-size journalist fearlessly ran down a 6-ft., 13-year-old mugger who had snatched a watch from her neck. The kid must not have been following her exercise regimen.
Brody was not always in such good shape. Her weight seesawed through high school in Brooklyn, N.Y., and the New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell, where she majored in biochemistry. But when she went for a master's degree in science writing at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and did a two-year stint at the Minneapolis Tribune, the move proved personally disastrous. "I wasn't used to Midwestern reticence," says the voluble Brody. "I felt very isolated and different. So I turned to food." Eventually she ballooned to 140 lbs., and there she floated until a kind of epiphany. "I just woke up in the middle of the night and said, 'I'm killing myself.' I decided that if I was going to be fat, at least I was going to be healthy. From that day on, I started eating regular meals and always carried a healthy snack with me." To her surprise, she began shedding pounds; she has never regained them.