15 ms·

Low-Calorie Diet Doesn’t Prolong Life, Study of Monkeys Finds

57 points by tocomment 14y ago

stephengillie 14y ago
Other article: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4450307 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4450307 There was a Univ of Wisconsin study, and an "Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio" study, and their results contradict.
- crpatino 14y ago
  This is mentioned in the article, as well of some possible explanations why replication was not possible. My personal favorite is: "The University of Wisconsin’s control monkeys were allowed to eat as much as they wanted and were fatter than those in the aging institute’s study, which were fed in amounts that were considered enough to maintain a healthy weight but were not unlimited."
  - rcthompson 14y ago
    This would seen to suggest that although caloric restriction may not prolong life, an all-you-can-eat diet may shorten it.
    - billswift 14y ago
      Yes. Derek Lowe discussed the articles, and I made almost your exact point in the comments there. http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/08/29/caloric_restriction_flops.php http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/08/29/caloric_rest...
    - david_shaw 14y ago
      > This would seen to suggest that although > caloric restriction may not prolong life, an > all-you-can-eat diet may shorten it. This is basically what I came to post. A calorie restricted diet may not prolong life compared to a healthy, normal weight, but obesity certainly cuts lifespan short through a plethora of health issues.
      - learc83 14y ago
        Yes it can cause all kinds of health problems, but the actual decrease in average age for a moderately obese person is only about 3 years.
rfugger 14y ago
I don't understand the problem with eating what you feel like when you're hungry, and stopping when you're full. You'd think a billion years of evolution would enable us to find a decent equilibrium by listening to our bodies. Obviously, it's the stopping when you're full part that's hard...
- crusso 14y ago
  Modern food availability and composition differs wildly from what we evolved on for 99.999% of that billion years. It's not a big surprise that finding an equilibrium in this relatively new food and mobility environment is difficult for our species.
- stephengillie 14y ago
  That would work if food were equally calorie dense. My stomach can hold about 3 cups of food most days. I can eat 3 cups of mashed potatoes (640 calories) or 3 cups of sugar (2326 calories) to feel full. We didn't have processed cane sugar and refined vegetable oils during all those years of evolution.
  - enraged_camel 14y ago
    The feeling of satiety is not just a function of how full your stomach is. It's also a function of blood sugar levels. If you were eating sugar, you would start feeling full a lot sooner than if you were eating mashed potatoes. As a result, you would eat less of it in volume. (This is why sweet things are almost always served as desert, so they have a "topping off the satiety" effect as opposed to "killing the appetite before the real meal" effect.) The danger here is calorie-dense fatty foods. Things like almonds and cashews are ridiculously easy to overeat, because they take up relatively little space and have a very tiny effect on blood sugar levels. edit: wow, why the downvotes?
    - learc83 14y ago
      >The danger here is calorie-dense fatty foods. Things like almonds and cashews are ridiculously easy to overeat, because they take up relatively little space and have a very tiny effect on blood sugar levels. I wouldn't say that's the danger. How many overweight people got that way because they eat too many cashews vs. guzzling liters of soda?
dfxm12 14y ago
I would argue that the point of a low-calorie diet isn't to live longer, but to look "better" (this, I guess depends on just how low the calorie count is). A lot of the things we do "look healthy" doesn't make us live longer.
- dclowd9901 14y ago
  Looking better is a quality-of-life issue. Who wants to live forever if they are a gelatinous, amorphous blob.
- jfoutz 14y ago
  In the 90's free radicals were thought to do bad things, like cause cancer. One popular argument about calorie restriction was, fewer calories means fewer free radicals added to a body over decades. Since the damaging effects were stochastic, lowering the overall count by 10% should have lowered the overall frequency of "bad stuff" happening. I know very little about nutrition, this is just how i recall the arguments.
- endtime 14y ago
  You're just talking about a totally different thing. Some people might restrict their caloric intake with the intent of losing weight, but independent of that, some people think that caloric restriction is good for longevity.
- herval 14y ago
  "looking better" also includes being able to walk without a segway, fitting on the airplane seat, not breaking the plastic chairs at the barbecue party, not dying with clogged arteries when you're 30, not dying with a liver full of fat when you're 20... I'm curious: what things that "look healthy" don't make us live longer?
  - tdfx 14y ago
    While I do agree that most attempts to "look better" will lead to better overall health, there's some ugly sides to that, as well: bulimia, anorexia, stimulant appetite suppressants, etc.
aezell 14y ago
As someone who recently embarked on a restricted-calorie diet, I can say that I'm not inclined to live longer in the sense of past the average life-span. I'm more inclined to have a higher quality of life and live long enough to see my child into his adulthood. That said, outside of weightloss and increased energy and stamina, I have noticed a few things about a reduced-calorie diet (and I'm talking 1000 calories or less most days): 1) I don't think about food as anything but fuel. I no longer think of it as a way to be social, to pass the time, or to be happy. 2) While it's possible to eat 1000 calories of calorie dense food with almost no other nutrition (sugar), I find that hunger demands I eat things that have more mass with less calories (vegetables and some proteins). 3) My day no longer revolves around eating. Pretty simple, but previously, I would be very concerned with what I had eaten the day before and might eat tomorrow. Outside of the measurements I'm keeping about caloric intake, I seldom think about food. 4) I'm saving money. I used to eat out a lot. Eating out, except for maybe a salad, makes it hard to reduce caloric intake. Now, I eat at home on the pound-for-pound cheaper food we can get at the farmer's market or grocery store.
- enraged_camel 14y ago
  Can you elaborate on how a calorie-restricted diet can result in "increased energy and stamina"? Specifically, if your energy intake is minimal, how do you end up with more energy than you had in your previous diet?
  - ktizo 14y ago
    Presumably, there is a peak efficiency of the digestive system where it is using the least energy in metabolism compared to the intake, which when combined with weighing less, so needing less energy to move, could mean that people eating relatively little in general could feel more energetic than someone eating far more. This becomes really obvious if you look at the upper end of the spectrum.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Overeating causes hibernation like effects. like a bear, sleeping after eating.
  - 14y ago
delinka 14y ago
I didn't know anyone claimed longevity as a benefit of a low-calorie diet. I'd always heard "low-calorie" used to combat obesity. And less obesity == more longevity. But never "love longer on fewer calories." Whether this is scientific demonstrable is another matter entirely. My personal theory is that avoiding gluttonous behavior will do you just fine. Stop when you're full. If you can do that, then you probably have the sensibilities to eat a well-rounded variety of foods. And you're done. That's it. Self-control & variety, Live Forever®
- Evbn 14y ago
  A bunch of famous studies on mice found that caloric restriction added years to life. It was related to the oxidant/anti-oxident craze of the past decade or two.
- herval 14y ago
  If it were really that simple, we'd have no fat people (me included). Compulsions are a hard thing to control, and if you add it to the fact that a lot of addicting substances are the basis of everyone's diets (sugar, salt, loads of carbs), then you see a compounding issue: personal/psychological issues + chemical stimulation from the food you eat = hopeless obesity...
- fghh45sdfhr3 14y ago
  I didn't know anyone claimed longevity as a benefit of a low-calorie diet. I've heard that on both TV (PBS documentary) and all over the Internet. Not that I ever belied any of it, but I've heard it a lot.
- mturmon 14y ago
  Lots of people are now using CR in an attempt to prolong life. Take a look at: http://www.crsociety.org/ http://www.crsociety.org/
gwern 14y ago
Fulltext: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85192141/2012-mattison.pdf http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85192141/2012-mattison.pdf
manfredz 14y ago
Check out the recent BBC Horizon documentary on this very subject http://youtu.be/Pfna7nV7WaM http://youtu.be/Pfna7nV7WaM
goggles99 14y ago
They should have fed these monkeys Highly processed, sugary foods and fast foods. Foods containing pesticides, low fiber and containing preservatives, antibiotics and growth hormones(a typical poor American diet). Then see which group loves longer. This would have had far more value since it is truer to life at least for Westerners. The less food you eat, the less wear on your organs right? the less toxins your body accumulates.
- gwern 14y ago
  Why? That is of no scientific interest. Testing the specific phenomenon of caloric restriction - substantial lifespan increases from cuts in high quality diets - is of interest.
snogglethorpe 14y ago
"... if you're a monkey."

57 points by tocomment 14y ago

Other article: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4450307 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4450307 There was a Univ of Wisconsin study, and an "Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio" study, and their results contradict.

crpatino 14y ago
This is mentioned in the article, as well of some possible explanations why replication was not possible. My personal favorite is: "The University of Wisconsin’s control monkeys were allowed to eat as much as they wanted and were fatter than those in the aging institute’s study, which were fed in amounts that were considered enough to maintain a healthy weight but were not unlimited."
- rcthompson 14y ago
  This would seen to suggest that although caloric restriction may not prolong life, an all-you-can-eat diet may shorten it.
  - billswift 14y ago
    Yes. Derek Lowe discussed the articles, and I made almost your exact point in the comments there. http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/08/29/caloric_restriction_flops.php http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/08/29/caloric_rest...
  - david_shaw 14y ago
    > This would seen to suggest that although > caloric restriction may not prolong life, an > all-you-can-eat diet may shorten it. This is basically what I came to post. A calorie restricted diet may not prolong life compared to a healthy, normal weight, but obesity certainly cuts lifespan short through a plethora of health issues.
    - learc83 14y ago
      Yes it can cause all kinds of health problems, but the actual decrease in average age for a moderately obese person is only about 3 years.

rfugger 14y ago

I don't understand the problem with eating what you feel like when you're hungry, and stopping when you're full. You'd think a billion years of evolution would enable us to find a decent equilibrium by listening to our bodies. Obviously, it's the stopping when you're full part that's hard...

crusso 14y ago
Modern food availability and composition differs wildly from what we evolved on for 99.999% of that billion years. It's not a big surprise that finding an equilibrium in this relatively new food and mobility environment is difficult for our species.
stephengillie 14y ago
That would work if food were equally calorie dense. My stomach can hold about 3 cups of food most days. I can eat 3 cups of mashed potatoes (640 calories) or 3 cups of sugar (2326 calories) to feel full. We didn't have processed cane sugar and refined vegetable oils during all those years of evolution.
- enraged_camel 14y ago
  The feeling of satiety is not just a function of how full your stomach is. It's also a function of blood sugar levels. If you were eating sugar, you would start feeling full a lot sooner than if you were eating mashed potatoes. As a result, you would eat less of it in volume. (This is why sweet things are almost always served as desert, so they have a "topping off the satiety" effect as opposed to "killing the appetite before the real meal" effect.) The danger here is calorie-dense fatty foods. Things like almonds and cashews are ridiculously easy to overeat, because they take up relatively little space and have a very tiny effect on blood sugar levels. edit: wow, why the downvotes?
  - learc83 14y ago
    >The danger here is calorie-dense fatty foods. Things like almonds and cashews are ridiculously easy to overeat, because they take up relatively little space and have a very tiny effect on blood sugar levels. I wouldn't say that's the danger. How many overweight people got that way because they eat too many cashews vs. guzzling liters of soda?

dfxm12 14y ago

I would argue that the point of a low-calorie diet isn't to live longer, but to look "better" (this, I guess depends on just how low the calorie count is). A lot of the things we do "look healthy" doesn't make us live longer.

dclowd9901 14y ago
Looking better is a quality-of-life issue. Who wants to live forever if they are a gelatinous, amorphous blob.
jfoutz 14y ago
In the 90's free radicals were thought to do bad things, like cause cancer. One popular argument about calorie restriction was, fewer calories means fewer free radicals added to a body over decades. Since the damaging effects were stochastic, lowering the overall count by 10% should have lowered the overall frequency of "bad stuff" happening. I know very little about nutrition, this is just how i recall the arguments.
endtime 14y ago
You're just talking about a totally different thing. Some people might restrict their caloric intake with the intent of losing weight, but independent of that, some people think that caloric restriction is good for longevity.
herval 14y ago
"looking better" also includes being able to walk without a segway, fitting on the airplane seat, not breaking the plastic chairs at the barbecue party, not dying with clogged arteries when you're 30, not dying with a liver full of fat when you're 20... I'm curious: what things that "look healthy" don't make us live longer?
- tdfx 14y ago
  While I do agree that most attempts to "look better" will lead to better overall health, there's some ugly sides to that, as well: bulimia, anorexia, stimulant appetite suppressants, etc.

aezell 14y ago

As someone who recently embarked on a restricted-calorie diet, I can say that I'm not inclined to live longer in the sense of past the average life-span. I'm more inclined to have a higher quality of life and live long enough to see my child into his adulthood. That said, outside of weightloss and increased energy and stamina, I have noticed a few things about a reduced-calorie diet (and I'm talking 1000 calories or less most days): 1) I don't think about food as anything but fuel. I no longer think of it as a way to be social, to pass the time, or to be happy. 2) While it's possible to eat 1000 calories of calorie dense food with almost no other nutrition (sugar), I find that hunger demands I eat things that have more mass with less calories (vegetables and some proteins). 3) My day no longer revolves around eating. Pretty simple, but previously, I would be very concerned with what I had eaten the day before and might eat tomorrow. Outside of the measurements I'm keeping about caloric intake, I seldom think about food. 4) I'm saving money. I used to eat out a lot. Eating out, except for maybe a salad, makes it hard to reduce caloric intake. Now, I eat at home on the pound-for-pound cheaper food we can get at the farmer's market or grocery store.

enraged_camel 14y ago
Can you elaborate on how a calorie-restricted diet can result in "increased energy and stamina"? Specifically, if your energy intake is minimal, how do you end up with more energy than you had in your previous diet?
- ktizo 14y ago
  Presumably, there is a peak efficiency of the digestive system where it is using the least energy in metabolism compared to the intake, which when combined with weighing less, so needing less energy to move, could mean that people eating relatively little in general could feel more energetic than someone eating far more. This becomes really obvious if you look at the upper end of the spectrum.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Overeating causes hibernation like effects. like a bear, sleeping after eating.
- 14y ago

delinka 14y ago

I didn't know anyone claimed longevity as a benefit of a low-calorie diet. I'd always heard "low-calorie" used to combat obesity. And less obesity == more longevity. But never "love longer on fewer calories." Whether this is scientific demonstrable is another matter entirely. My personal theory is that avoiding gluttonous behavior will do you just fine. Stop when you're full. If you can do that, then you probably have the sensibilities to eat a well-rounded variety of foods. And you're done. That's it. Self-control & variety, Live Forever®

Evbn 14y ago
A bunch of famous studies on mice found that caloric restriction added years to life. It was related to the oxidant/anti-oxident craze of the past decade or two.
herval 14y ago
If it were really that simple, we'd have no fat people (me included). Compulsions are a hard thing to control, and if you add it to the fact that a lot of addicting substances are the basis of everyone's diets (sugar, salt, loads of carbs), then you see a compounding issue: personal/psychological issues + chemical stimulation from the food you eat = hopeless obesity...
fghh45sdfhr3 14y ago
I didn't know anyone claimed longevity as a benefit of a low-calorie diet. I've heard that on both TV (PBS documentary) and all over the Internet. Not that I ever belied any of it, but I've heard it a lot.
mturmon 14y ago
Lots of people are now using CR in an attempt to prolong life. Take a look at: http://www.crsociety.org/ http://www.crsociety.org/

gwern 14y ago

Fulltext: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85192141/2012-mattison.pdf http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85192141/2012-mattison.pdf

manfredz 14y ago

Check out the recent BBC Horizon documentary on this very subject http://youtu.be/Pfna7nV7WaM http://youtu.be/Pfna7nV7WaM

goggles99 14y ago

They should have fed these monkeys Highly processed, sugary foods and fast foods. Foods containing pesticides, low fiber and containing preservatives, antibiotics and growth hormones(a typical poor American diet). Then see which group loves longer. This would have had far more value since it is truer to life at least for Westerners. The less food you eat, the less wear on your organs right? the less toxins your body accumulates.

gwern 14y ago
Why? That is of no scientific interest. Testing the specific phenomenon of caloric restriction - substantial lifespan increases from cuts in high quality diets - is of interest.

snogglethorpe 14y ago

"... if you're a monkey."