Calorie restrictive eating for longer life? The story we didn’t hear in the news

In the caloric restriction experiments, the nutritional density of the food the animals are fed is almost always increased. Fewer calories, same levels of protein, nutrients, etc. It's not just a matter of 'less'.

From what I've read, humans on caloric restriction diets have to design their diets carefully, to increase the nutritional density of their own food supply. (E.g. http://www.calorierestriction.org/Getting_started)

I don't see how prudent it is. What can I do with that information, given the rest of the results of the study?

I don't have anything against diabetes, cancer or heart/brain disease per se. It's not as if, when I die from an infection or pneumonia, I'll congratulate myself that it wasn't cancer!

I guess what I'm trying to say is that, if you consider it "prudent to note the reduced rate of diabetes, cancer, and heart/brain disease", then my response is it's just precisely as prudent to note the increase in non-diabetes, cancer, and heart/brain disease related deaths.

What are you talking about? He linked to the study and priced it out for you, but he didn't read it? The article compared the actual findings of the study with what was reported in the media and press releases.

I don't care how careful they were in explaining why they vacated many of the deaths; if you're trying to show that monkeys live longer on calorie restricted diets, you can't do that. At least, you can't if you want to convince me or most rational people.

Why the downvotes? It's absolutely true. "I heard something" is not a proper argument, and the claim that CR has no effect on lifetime is at odds with everything I've heard on the matter. One of my friends (Chemistry PhD) is crazy about the subject, has read all the studies and he's very excited about the insight CR discoveries may bring.

So .. harsh but fair. Anecdotes are worthless. Source please. And cdr should be rewarded, not punished, for calling it out.

I do not know what I am talking about when it comes to this topic. Neither, it seems, do most others here. We are intelligent laymen, but laymen all the same. So what do we do in order to intelligently judge this blog post?

Well, first, let's consider what we know about the contenders. On one side, a number of respected professional scientists conducting a very expensive multi-decade study and publishing the results in peer-reviewed journals. On the other side, a nurse with a Blogspot blog.

OK, that is not necessarily bad. Great truths have been spoken by nobodies. We judge by the message, not the speaker.

But still, we need more "meta" information. Studies appearing in peer reviewed journals are assumed to be reliable because of the good history of the journal. Let's try to ascertain the reliability of this source, looking at her history - and maybe we'll find some other things she discusses that we do know something about, so we can match up her worldview to ours.

And ... oh dear. Let's look at this blog, shall we? I'll ignore the warning sign of the 20+ links to "fat support" groups in the blogroll. Maybe she's just supportive of her large readers. Maybe she doesn't have an agenda? Benefit of the doubt and all that.

Oh, another long (LONG) article in which she completely demolishes another study, this time about the "obesity paradox" - being slightly overweight was associated with a slight increase in health. She claims that in fact the study shows that overweight and obese people are much healthier than the media reported, and they were covering it up.

Hm. She takes two major studies to pieces in as many posts. That's unusual, for not one but TWO studies to be completely wrong, in a short amount of time, and one person - her - to be the one to find where they are wrong. And both wrong, as it happens, in favour of eating.

Are you getting suspicious yet?

Let's move further down the first page of her blog. Ooh, a post in which she cherry picks a couple of bad examples of govt. health care to make an unsubtle point about the planned health reforms in America. Completely ignores that every other developed country has socialised health care and we do fine - plus live longer (which we shouldn't, since fat people have an advantage, apparently!).

I am beginning to smell a crank.

I make it down to "Pudge Police are coming (Part 2)" before calling it quits.

Still treating this article as something worth your time?