Longevity- Calorie Quality vs Calorie Quantity

[avalon]

I found an interesting article this morning and I thought I'd share in case you've never seen it 

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1140681

In April, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a study challenging the conventional wisdom that eating less promotes longevity. The study found that the very thin run roughly the same risk of early death as the overweight. And now the tide seems to be turning against a common explanation for the long-standing observation that restricting food in lab organisms from yeast to mice prolongs life.

[avalon]

Let me add this fly to the mix.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-scent-of-a-calorie-wh

Brown University ecologist Marc Tatar says the current study, published in this week's Science, provides "really profound evidence" that longevity is controlled not by actual resources but rather by hormones that are cued to resources (such as the way plants sense winter by sunlight changes). "It's like the whole system doesn't actually function on the currency of resources anymore, it all functions on virtual data about what the resources should be like," he says. "It's mind over matter."

fun stuff

[TylerDurden]

There are a lot of problems involved with caloric restriction. Intermittent Fasting seems to provide the benefits of caloric restriction without the dissadvantages re general weakness etc. Not that I recommend IF for everyone as some people find fasting of any kind a disaster given specific health-problems, but IF can be useful.

[avalon]

Yeah, I know you feel this way- this is about the flies 

oh and the worms!

I find this particularly interesting.
http://www.molecularstation.com/science-news/2008/10/longevity-in-worms-that-are-unable-to-smell/

If roundworms sense that food is abundant, their metabolism adjusts accordingly.  Their bodies respond to promote rapid ingestion, rapid growth and rapid aging, Kornfeld explains.  In contrast, when the worms sense a shortage of food, they make “metabolic decisions” to delay growth, delay energy use and extend lifespan.

Best wishes,
Avalon