But Andrew will snack on a beating heart (no human flesh allowed) for the love of experiencing a different cultural through food and travel. He has visited more than 90 countries and nibbled on 15 different types of rats. I was shock when told that the only things that he would not eat are walnuts.

Educate, entertain and inspire is his motive.

From speaking with Andrew, I consider him an educator and philosopher. He considers himself a journalist first. “A small J”, he said, but a journalist.

Through his award winning programs, he inspires us to get off the couch, go down the beaten path and experience the world. “I want my son to know these stories, meet these people, see the world as it really is in African villages, European capitals and Asian markets. Because the way you learn is by sharing with others. You don’t get anything out of life by living it based on self.”

Before writing this story, I didn’t realize how much traveling and aging had in common.

Andrew states it best in one of his many books, The Bizarre Truth. “Be a traveler, not a tourist. Travel forces you to push your limits and learn things about yourself that you never imagined.”

He enthusiastically responded to the reading of his writing. “Travel keeps me fresh with each new experience! The fact of the matter is that you travel and get off the beaten path. Being a traveler and not a tourist, you are forced to ask questions, experiment, take risk, get outside your confront zone, and it changes you. “

And so, the interview began.

FS: What was your state of mind when you first turned 50, and what is your mindset now?

AZ: Turning 50 felt kinda like any other day, I don’t really take the age thing very seriously in terms of numerology. Every time I enter a new decade, I think that the next decade is going to be my best one ever. And this was no exception. So far, it has proven to be true. It is great time of life.

FS: I enjoyed the dedication to mom (Andrew’s mom, Caren, passed in 2011. He wrote a beautiful tribute to her on his website.) How is your dad?

AZ: He is great. Still going strong and cooking up a storm in Portland Maine. He is doing fantastically, thank you for asking. He is as feisty as ever.

FS: Will he appear on any upcoming episodes?

AZ: No, he is almost 85 and traveling for him is such a pain in the ass. My dad is a true original. Now that he has been on my show, I don’t think that he wants to be on it again. It was fun the first time.

FS: I noticed that you lost some weight.

AZ: I took time off from the show and I was exercising more. And since I started getting back into filming and exercising less, I’ve put back on the 20 pounds that I dropped. So I made a commitment to myself, to get my ass back in the gym so I can look that good again in a couple of months.

FS: Do you have any daily rituals?

AZ: (He laughs) No. Everyone is sort of surprised by that. Aside from walking the dog, really nothing. I am a bright shining objects person. I am constantly fascinated by every little light bulb popping off all around me and I am easily distracted.

FS: What do you consider to be your comfort food?

AZ: My wife’s roasted chicken. She is the chef in the family.

FS: What is in your freezer at home?

AZ: A lot of different ice creams, my wife’s homemade tomato sauce for backup dinners, pesto with basil from our garden, my son’s collection of popsicles and back up hamburger buns.

FS: During your travels, have you every gotten sick eating exotic foods?

AZ: Never.

FS: What do you contribute that to?

AZ: I eat hot food hot and cold food cold and I always go where there are busy cooks and happy customers.

FS: Please share one of your dangerous travel experiences.

AZ: It happens every week in pursuit of a good story. You find yourself as a journalist, and I do consider myself a journalist, one with a small “j”, but a journalist nevertheless. You find yourself going pass a lot of warning signs. Ordinarily, if I didn’t have my camera crew with me, I would give second thought too.

I’ve been in Ethiopia during a civil war. I have been in northern Syria, just off the Israeali border and run out of gas in the middle of a highway. If the wrong person had come up over the road, we would have been done for. I walked in a hostel, probably the most dangerous half a square mile of living residents in the world that is located in Johannesburg. I’ve walked into the worst of the worst of the Sabolos in Rio de Janeiro, a city of 400,000 people on the side of a mountain that is run by drug traffickers and I never gave it a second thought. I am in pursuit of a food story and I find those places interesting at the time for telling the story of a culture and a people through food. I really don’t give it a second thought until I am done.

FS: What is the funniest thing that has ever happened while filming?

We have a lot of fun on our show. The hygiene is kind of hysterical. I’m not sure that I can remember ever laughing as hard as when we were shooting a hunting episode in Savannah in the marshland. I shot a bird and it fell about 20 yards from the boat and I was wearing weights. I hopped out of the book to go get the bird and I got sunk in the mud up to my waist.

I couldn’t move. Then my cameraman came after me and he got stuck, and my producer came out after the two of us and he got stuck. The tide was coming in…we knew that we weren’t going to drown or die but, the comedy of it and realization that no one else could come and get us. It was one of those “you had to be there moments.” It was so hysterical that I still laugh when I look at the pictures.

FS: Is there anything that you won’t eat?

AZ: Walnuts. Can’t stand them.

FS: Speaking of nuts, I believe there is a website called Andrew Zimmern Ate My Nuts.

AZ: I love that website. I believe that the website is actually called Andrew Zimmern Ate My Balls.

FS: How do you remain fresh and vibrant?

AZ: The transformative power of travel is staggering and I think that this is one of the key concepts to approaching life with fresh eyes every day and staying relevant for yourself, to constantly be changing and growing. So that is how I do it.

It certainly keeps me excited about life.

FS: What do you consider to be prosperity and success?

AZ: It is all relative. You have to be careful for what you ask for. There are days that I wish that I am still doing all the stuff that I am doing, but that people didn’t quite as like it as much. Because the more popular it gets, the greater the demands for your time are. I love my fans and I love doing what I do for a living, but I have been blessed with more that one person’s fair share and that can get very hard to navigate.

FS: What do you do outside of work that you enjoy?

AZ: I try to do things for other people, so I get involved with a lot of charity work. My family and I support a lot of causes and work tirelessly so we can get out of our own way. I don’t quite like being this comfy. That being said, I still don’t think that I am successful. I will be successful when I can spend more time with my family than I do now.

FS: Do you have any plans for retirement?

AZ: Never, I mean I am lucky. What I do for a living, I can write magazine articles, do some type of television and write books and do all the things that I am doing to whatever scale I want until I am old.

FS: How do you stay balanced with life?

AZ: Stay in balance? You don’t. They assume that I keep it in balance. I don’t. It is wildly hurdling out of control. I hope that I can keep the plates and balls spinning in the air long enough before anyone notices it.

Andrew’s view on personal growth and traveling

Quite frankly, the amount of personal growth that you get when you’re traveling is not found in any other personal pursuit. The only events that changed me as much as travel is getting married and the birth of my son.

When you travel, you put yourself in a position to challenge yourself and grow in ways that are unimaginable. Things that you experience that you will never experience sitting on your couch at home. It doesn’t have to be to some exotic place.