Restricting Calories Does Not Necessarily Extend Monkeys’ Lives
Source: blogs.discovermagazine.com

But don’t pull out a calorie calculator quite yet. The latest word on the subject, from a new paper in Nature, suggests that the 2009 study might not tell the whole story: this team found that caloric restriction doesn’t actually grant rhesus monkeys longer lives.
In this new 23-year-long study from the National Institute on Aging (NIA), rhesus monkeys, which have an average lifespan of 27 years in captivity, ate either a nutritious diet as control subjects or the same diet slashed by 30 percent. Some of the monkeys had their calorie intake restricted from a young age, while for others, the restricted diet only set in when they were 16 to 23 years old.
For the old-onset monkeys, a restricted diet improved health but did not increase longevity or influence cause of death. But among the young-onset monkeys, cutting calories significantly improved neither health nor longevity. (Although some of the young-onset rhesus monkeys are still alive, based on estimated probability statistics, there is less than a 0.1 percent chance that the calorie-restricted subjects will significantly outlive the controls.)
[...]
Read the full article at: discovermagazine.com