Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Longevity findings

A lengthy article in Slate today explains that a recently released, long-anticipated study on monkeys failed to show that caloric restriction increased lifespan.  It turns out that these monkeys -- even the ones without caloric restriction -- all outlived even the restricted monkeys from the trial everyone knows about.  And it turns out the explanation was simply that they got better food:


It didn’t take him long to realize that the animals’ food was more important than anyone had thought. The NIA monkeys were fed a natural-ingredient diet, made from ground wheat, ground corn, and other whole foods; the Wisconsin animals ate a “purified” diet, a heavily refined type of food that allowed the researchers to control the nutritional content more precisely. Because the NIA monkeys were eating more natural ingredients, de Cabo realized, they were taking in more polyphenols, micronutrients, flavonoids, and other compounds that may have health-promoting effects.

Furthermore, the NIA diet consisted of 4 percent sucrose—while in the Wisconsin diet, sucrose accounted for some 28 percent of the total calories. High sugar consumption is thought to be a primary driver of obesity, diabetes, and possibly some cancers. “In physics, a calorie is a calorie,” says de Cabo. “In nutrition and animal physiology, there is more and more data coming out that says that the state of the animal is going to depend more on where the calories are coming from.”


--

So that's what I'd like to eat from here on in --  a natural-ingredient diet, made from ground wheat, ground corn, and other whole foods.  If they fed it to monkeys, it can't be all that expensive.  Where can I get me some?  Who will be the first to package it and get rich?

No comments:

Post a Comment