Eat less, live longer? UW study focuses on cutting calories
Eating less may not only reduce one’s waistline — it could also increase lifespan.
That’s the conclusion drawn by researchers Ricki J. Colman and Richard Weindruch at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Institute on Aging, who have recently published the results to a 20-year study on caloric restriction in the journal Science.
The study shows that rhesus monkeys are “showing many beneficial signs of caloric resistance, including significantly less diabetes, cancer, and heart and brain disease” — effectively slowing the aging process, according to an article in the New York Times.
The monkeys were fed a diet that contained normal, healthy ingredients and 30 percent fewer calories than usual. In previous, similar studies, mice fed such a diet from birth lived about 40 percent longer than other mice.
The dieting monkeys are expected to live 10 percent to 20 percent longer, researchers said.
The New York Times story added that few people can be expected to consumer 30 percent fewer calories, so scientists have been searching for drugs that might mimic the effects of restricting calories.
Popularity: 55% [?]
