Calorie Restriction With Adequate Nutrition

The only proven primate LifeExtension? method. Animals kept to 60% of ad-libitum calorie intake experience a 40% increase in maximum life span under laboratory conditions. If the same method works in humans this would result in a maximum life span of 170 years. Less effective if begun after puberty, but if begun before puberty results in stunted growth. An adult maintaining CRAN from the age of about 20 would have a theoretical maximum lifespan of around 150.

More importantly, the practice of CalorieRestrictionWithAdequateNutrition dramatically increases average lifespan. Animals kept this way experience far fewer degenerative and communicable diseases, and generally stay spry, flexible, and intelligent almost to their dying day. At that point some other termination mechanism kicks in and they go very quickly and quietly.

Now there are four big problems with doing this to yourself.

Maintaining adequate, or even better optimal nutrition when you're eating so few calories is hard. Supplements help, but you have to restrict not only quantity but variety of food to keep it up.
Increased susceptibility to cold. Simply put, you have less insulating meat on your bones.
Whippet-thinness. CRAN practitioners look borderline anorexic. They may be healthy as hell, but they appear to be fresh out of the concentration camp.
Eating is fun. Socially, sensually, and creatively. Eating CRAN you miss out on a lot of fun. Perhaps so much it's not worth it.

But there is one way you can do CRAN and not experience these difficulties. It's called EveryOtherDayEating?, but really that's a misnomer. The nice thing about it is you get to stuff yourself to the gills on a regular basis. It's not necessarily going to convey all the benefits of full on CRAN, but it may be much easier to tolerate in the long haul. Anyway, here's the schedule:

Odd Day: No breakfast, late lunch, big dinner.
Even Day: Big brunch, tiny dinner

So every day you get at least one meal at which you can eat freely, but your metabolism still gets 24 hours out of every 48 without significant food. Takes about a week to get into the rhythm of it - and then you don't feel hungry at all. But drink lots of liquids and supplement carefully. Many more details at http://www.calorierestriction.org.

So out of the 6+ billion humans currently present, this hasn't been tried before, whether by accident or design? Where are these 170 year old people? We do have some 120 year olds. Are they doing this?

I doubt that anyone would have "accidentally" combined proper nutrition (most likely involving supplements) with a large caloric restriction over a (say) 50-year timespan.

Don't you still have to restrict meal sizes for that every other day thing to work?

As far as every other day has been studied so far, no, you don't. According to studies referenced at the site above, rats fed EOD averaged 9% less calories than eat-all-you-want overall - they stuffed themselves when they were able and weighed only 19% less than the control fat rats. But lived an average of 83% longer. Apparently it's not caloric intake per se that causes the life extension effect.

But then again EOD hasn't been studied anywhere near so much as every-day restriction, and there may be lots of caveats that no one understands yet. All I can say is eating this way makes me feel healthy and happy and not hungry. I like the schedule above better than one-day-on one-day-off because you do most of the fasting in your sleep, and if you screw up one day it's much easier to recover. --PeterMerel

Food Labeling Sucks

"Serving size" is too arbitrary a unit. A better idea I learned about is "nutrient density" (ND). It's somewhat similar to the "recommended daily value" used by some vitamin labeling. Essentially it's based on the idea of an "ideal" food that has the recommended proportions of ingredients per calories. For example, if the daily recommended protein intake is 25% of total calories (hypothetical only), then a food that has 25% of calories in proteins would have a protein ND of 100%. If it had 50% of its calories in protein, then its ND would be 200%. The ideal food would have approximately 100% in all categories. It's based on ratios such that "serving size" is not necessary. Of course there is no such thing as an ideal food, but fatty, salty, and sugary foods would definitely stand out numerically. A simplified law may only require reporting ND if certain levels are reached for "problem" areas such as fat, salt, and sugar. Otherwise, people may be scared away from say high protein foods because they'd have a high ND number. But eating too much protein is rarely a problem (except for perhaps fad diets, but I say we ignore such nuts if it simplifies things for the rest).

One down-side is that different ages and genders need somewhat different proportions, but marked footnotes may be able to address those.

A second labeling fix is needed for whole grains. Many find that 100% whole grain is too extreme and a mix is more palatable. However, there is no labeling requirement for mixes such that food companies will sprinkle a tiny bit of whole grain or bran and say something misleading such as "made with whole grains" even though the mix may only be say 20% whole grain. Labels should be required to indicate the percent of mix of whole grains. By grain would be the ideal (wheat, corn, barely, etc.), but a general percent for all grains may be good enough.

You know what bugs me? There's an acceptable level of rat faeces in food. I'll tell you what level is acceptable: None! No rat faeces is acceptable. Any other amount is unacceptable.

Also: You know why people are fat? It's because they sit on their asses. I eat more food than you (this is an indisputable truth) but I'm thin. Yes, I'm thin. Know why? It's because I exercise. I don't watch the boob tube and I do stuff, and I still eat more food in most meals than some deprived African villages eat in a year. Of course, I don't eat crap. I don't chow down at McDonald's greasefest or Burger *gag* King, and I don't eat cake. You do, and that's why you're disgustingly obese. That, and you watch far too much television.

There's no evidence that eating X calories in cake causes direct obesity compared to eating that same X calories in say vegetables.

Of course there is. Calories don't make you fat, fat does. Cake is full of fat, and it's all that fat that piles up on your ass. Vegetables aren't fattening except for avocado, so eat less guacamole. Nobody ever got fat eating peas.

Sorry. Studies don't bear that out. If anything, it's carbohydrates that seem to trigger positive feedback cycles.

The measurable difference is in potentially getting diseases like diabetes, which may magnify weight issues eventually, but that's an indirect cause.

You mean every fat person has diabetes? Wat?

I did not say that. I added the word "potentially" to clarify.

We all know exercise is good, but it is a usually a boring chore to most. PersonalChoiceElevatedToMoralImperative? If you do the math, then the free time you spend exercising may not make up for the 5 years or so one lives longer, at least in the US where free time is relatively rare. I try to take relatively short walks often and mow the lawn etc. but it's still not enough exercise to make a big difference.

You need a bigger lawn.

Yeah :-)

CategoryFoodAndDrink