The Meaning of Longer Life

I'm too busy this week for original thoughts, so here's some rational thought on "Calorie Restriction" and long life, from The Meaning of Life in the New York Times and from one of my favorite bloggers, Szwarc at Junkfood Science.

Comments

  1. Thank you for posting these, Laura. I'm a graduate of UW-Madison, where these studies are being condcuted, and I have to say that in this case, I'm not proud of my alma mater. Reading about the calorie restriction diet makes me queasy (how ironic is that?).

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  2. Thank you, Maddog. I'd like to think that these CR apologists will live long enough to regret their actions. But I doubt they are getting enough food to think that clearly.

    Queasy is right!

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  3. I am curious about the effects of calorie restriction on the fertility of female subjects, and also on the ability to successfully lactate if they do give birth. Evolution-wise, in many species of mammals, females are built to be either pregnant or lactating until menopause. Humans have obviously changed that dynamic, but nevertheless, females need a certain amount of good nutrition in order to keep the species going.

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  4. I'm also concerned about the effects of calorie restriction on bone health in both women and men.

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  5. To me, the question comes down to quality vs. quantity. I will have spent about as much time in my 20s as anyone, but now that I'm rapidly approaching 30 and am looking back at the past decade and wondering what the hell just happened, it makes me wonder. I don't want more decades like this. I don't want to live until 120. I don't--especially not if it means I have to remain obsessed about food. The past ten years of food obsessions have done essentially nothing to lengthen my lifespan and everything to shorten it.

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  6. I'm pushing 50 and not at all sure what happened to the past 20 years, frankly. They go faster as I go forward.

    The whole attraction to CR smacks of Pyrrhic self-abnegation. I doubt more than a handful of these people are not diagnosably mentally ill with anorexia. The distance between pro-ana and CR seems to be better PR.

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