Cooper’s disinterest in food and rest

Anderson Cooper is such a workaholic, he doesn’t have time to eat, said Marisa Guthrie in The Hollywood Reporter. The 51-year-old CNN anchor and 60 Minutes correspondent happily works seven days a week. To save time, he’s even given up eating solid food, instead chugging coffee-flavored Soylent, a liquid meal replacement that ostensibly contains all the protein, nutrients, and fiber a human being needs. “I don’t care about food,” Cooper says. “So I’m trying to replace all food with this because it would be, like, three fewer decisions in a day.” Cooper’s oddball eating habits were a source of horror for his late CNN colleague Anthony Bourdain. “We had lunches together, and he would just look at me like I was a creature from another planet,” he says. For Cooper, work is also a source of escape from tragedy in his life. It’s the reason he volunteered to start hosting the New Year’s Eve telecasts: His father died during open heart surgery five days after New Year’s Eve, when Cooper was 10 years old. “I remember that New Year’s Eve, watching with my brother, and it was very scary because my dad was in the hospital,” he says. “I am not good at, like, sitting on a beach. I’m not good at decompressing.”