calorie restriction

Although slimmer, calorie restricted rhesus monkeys (left) do not live longer than their age-matched counterparts (right). (Housing shown was for photo purposes only; Image: National Institutes of Aging; Austad SN, Nature 2012). Despite promising results in mice and rats that calorie restriction prolongs lifespan, results from the US National Institute on Aging (NIA) in Bethesda, MD were just published in Nature last week and concluded that calorie restriction for primates had no effect on longevity.   In the study, young and old rhesus monkeys were fed either control diets or 30% reduced-…

If I say the phrases 'anti-ageing' and 'nutritional balance' to you, you'd probably think of the pages of quack websites selling untested supplements than the pages of Nature. And yet this week's issue has a study that actually looks at these issues with scientific rigour. It shows that, at least for fruit flies, eating a diet with just the right balance of nutrients can lengthen life without the pesky drawback of producing fewer offspring. Despite the claims of the cosmetic and nutritional industries, chemicals or techniques that slow the ageing process are few and far between. We're a long…

People diet for many reasons - to fit into clothes, to look more attractive, or for the sake of their health. But to improve their memory? It's an interesting idea, and one that's been given fresh support by Veronica Witte and colleagues from the University of Munster in Germany. Witte found that elderly people who slash the calories in their diet by 30% were better able to remember lists of words than people who stuck to their normal routine. It's the first experiment to show that cutting calories can improve human memory at an age when declining memory is par for the course. The benefits…