Valter Longo's work is probably the most robust and human-targeted on this topic, since his group is trying to get fasting and calorie restriction past the FDA

Valter Longo's work is probably the most robust and human-targeted on this topic, since his group is trying to get fasting and calorie restriction past the FDA as an adjuvant treatment for cancer. His breakthrough here is arguably as much the medical diet as a way to pull for-profit Big Pharma interest and funding into this field as the actual science. Still, intermittent fasting is still far behind straight calorie restriction in terms of data and level of conviction that the output has a certain set of effects under a given set of circumstances. The interesting thing to my eyes is that the gene expression studies show that fasting and calorie restriction at similar overall intake of calories produce overlapping but in some ways quite different gene expression changes. Short-lived species have a much larger response in terms of health and longevity to all these things in comparison to long-lived species such as ourselves, however. All in all it's quite the interesting area of research, especially now that the scientific community is making significant progress towards biomarkers of biological aging (such as DNA methylation pattern). Here's a good introductory paper or two for human CR: Will calorie restriction work in humans? - http://impactaging.com/papers/v5/n7/full/100581.html http://impactaging.com/papers/v5/n7/full/100581.html NIH study finds calorie restriction lowers some risk factors for age-related diseases - http://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-study-finds-calorie-restriction-lowers-some-risk-factors-age-related-diseases http://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-study-finds... And an interview with Longo on the thrust of his work on intermittent fasting and CR: http://michelsonmedical.org/2014/12/26/igf-1-fasting-discussion-valter-longo/ http://michelsonmedical.org/2014/12/26/igf-1-fasting-discuss...