Calorie Restriction May Not Extend Lifespan

sciencehabit writes "Slash your food intake and you can live dramatically longer — at least if you're a mouse or a nematode. But a major study designed to determine whether this regimen, known as caloric restriction, works in primates suggests that it improves monkeys' health but doesn't extend their lives. Researchers not involved with the new paper say the results are still encouraging. Although the monkeys didn't evince an increase in life span, both studies show a major improvement in 'health span,' or the amount of time before age-related diseases set in. 'I certainly wouldn't give up on calorie restriction as a health promoter' based on these findings, says molecular biologist Leonard Guarente of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge."

Comments

I'll die happy

[justdiver]

I'd rather be fat and die early having eaten the things I liked, than old, skinny and never enjoyed a triple bacon burger with extra cheese.

Re:I'll die happy

[sa666u]

Provided that eating is the only thing that makes you happy. I used to think just like you but at some point your body starts giving up and your life gets miserable despite the feasts.

Re:I'll die happy

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

I'd rather be fat and die early having eaten the things I liked, than old, skinny and never enjoyed a triple bacon burger with extra cheese.

Is your life about only food? If that's the only thing you enjoy, then by all means yours the philosophy to live by.

In addition, nothing says you can't enjoy these foods - the key is moderation. Don't glut yourself.

It seems a common misunderstanding when it comes to "limiting caloric intake" is that you can never eat anything "bad for you"; but I think it's far more important that you don't eat a) nothing *but* 'bad for you', or b) unlimited quantites of the same.

Have a slice of pizza and a soda. Don't have half a pie and a two liter bottle of soda, and don't eat the pizza every night. Pretty simple.

Re:I'll die happy

[neorush]

I really hope this is a joke, because the thing is you probably won't die early, instead you'll be propped up by whatever health care system you're under at a ridiculous cost to everyone else. I can also pretty much guarantee you won't want to eat that triple bacon burger with extra cheese after dialysis or chemotherapy because the diet you describe increases your chance of all these problems dramatically. After working with obese folks for years now I can tell you that the last 10 or so years of their lives are not only not enjoyable, they are down right miserable, and expensive as well.
I didn't read TFA but I wonder if this study consider the quality of those calories, e.g. in America we try and diet by eating one cheeseburger instead of two, of course we could have eaten 5 apples instead, been full and satisfied, and gotten some nutrition as well.

Re:I'll die happy

[jedidiah]

Bacon that is a least 50% fat and high in salt.
Cheap high fat ground beef.
Cheese that is likely Velveeta with trans fat.
White bread that will trash your blood sugar levels.

There's pretty much something there to sabotage everyone's digestive system and metabolic balance.

Re:I'll die happy

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a shortage of protein, an abundance of calories, and most importantly an utter absence of exercise keeping people unhealthy. Your body has vast mechanisms in place to convert fats to sugars and vice versa, which is why too much fat can lead to diabetes just as easily as too much sugar can.

Get off your lazy ass, get sufficient protein, keep your other calories under control, and it doesn't matter much if they come from carbs or fat.

Re:I'll die happy

[Hatta]

Eating well is no guarantee. My dad ate almost nothing but vegetables, chicken, and fish for his entire adult life, and still died of a heart attack at age 53. He didn't do it for heart disease though, he did it for MS which remained in remission for the rest of his life.(whether the diet actually had anything to do with that, who knows?) But I think the point stands. If you can avoid saturated fats for 30 years and keel over from a heart attack, what's the point of avoiding saturated fats?

Re:I'll die happy

[NettiWelho]

Congratulations on having spotted a statistical trend armed with whopping total of 2 data points.

Re:I'll die happy

[RobertLTux]

okay so its not possible to have

1 lean bacon (more red than white)
2 ground lean steak
3 actual Cheddar
4 a Whole Grain/Multigrain Bun

and maybe some lettuce ,tomato and pickles on said burger??

and i think having some chili cheese chips (roasted not fried) would be good.

Re:I'll die happy

[Hatta]

I certainly believe in science, but I'd suggest that my fathers medical history is a lot more relevant to my future health than reasearch done on the population level.

Misleading

[joh]

This study proves that further calorie restriction doesn't extend the lifespan compared to an already healthy diet. *Both* though extend the lifespan compared to eating enough to become obese.

I'm just saying this because there'll be enough people who will take this as a prove that over-eating is fine. It isn't.

By the way, a diet consisting of all the fruits, vegetables and meat you can eat is totally fine. It's very hard to become obese when you avoid sugars, starch and other carbohydrates. Sadly, almost everything ready-made you can buy is full to the brim of these.

Ah, the joys of a good obesity argument...

[Havenwar]

I'm stuffed! No really, I'm so full I feel like rolling off this chair. I just had half a pizza and half a bottle of coke, and I'm not entirely sure I won't finish at least one of those two when this settles down!

And with that said, I've lost about 160lbs over the last year and a half. I eat pizza, noddles, burgers, I have ice cream, candy... I eat chips, dip, sauces... Oh man, do I ever... So how did I lose that weight?

I stopped eating so god damn much.

That's it. No exercise, no mysticism, no fad diets. I don't pay particular attention to what food is healthy and what isn't, I just look at how many calories it is, and I eat less of it than I expend in a day. This pizza feast? Oh man, at a guesstimate I binged a good 2000 calories tonight, that's more than I usually eat in an entire day! And that's okay, because I don't do this every day. Tomorrow I won't even feel like eating much for the first half of the day, I'll probably end up eating a pear or two for breakfast just to wake up the system, and then lunch will be something light again. All in all it's not the day that counts, but the average over time.

So yeah, from one former fatass to all the fatasses out there... keep fooling yourself if you want, keep telling yourself that you don't want to lose weight because you'll have to stop eating tasty shit... it's not true, not even remotely. You are using it as an excuse and you know it. It just means you'll have to stop eating twice as much as you need. And no, you won't be constantly hungry if you eat less, people aren't built to eat the amounts you do, it's just your body that has gotten used to it. Once you've stopped that in it's tracks, the body quickly adjusts, and you'll once more only be hungry before meals and so on.

There's no magic. You can keep eating whatever the fuck you want. Just a lot less of it. If you want to eat a LOT, then sure, salad is the way to go... but if you want to eat deliciously greasy... some moderation is key. And it's not harder than that. It's not even much of an effort. No need to go on a diet, no need to even decide to lose weight... just decide to eat less. That's it. Eat less. Weight will fall off, at an unbelievable rate, and you'll still be eating your pizza and chugging that coke... just not for every meal any more.