Fat Tuesday: Caloric restriction’s days are numbered

http://www.google.com/search?q=small+food+portion+image&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari#miuv=1

“The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.” – Mark Train

Twain may have been correct about health, but longevity  may be another matter altogether. Eat, drink, and be merry… if you want to die: that is what the evidence has shown for the last 75 years, right? In a way, perhaps it was too good to be true: go on a diet and live happily ever after… forever. Well, not forever, but, yes, for significantly longer. It still seems to be a robust finding in mice and rats, where lifetimes are short and easily measured in the lifetime of a single grant funding cycle. But a new careful, well-controlled, and decade-spanning study from a group at the National Institute on Aging has shown that, whereas monkeys that are put on a restricted diet long-term may be healthier than monkeys that are fed 50% more, they don’t live longer. But you have to admit that they during monkeys do look spritely.

— Stephen Macknik

http://www.nature.com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/pdf/nature11484.pdf