Denise Grady, Wishing You a Long and Hungry Life qeced.net
[ from NYT, 10/8/97. I should look up something more recent, but my general impression is that the caloric restriction research is holding up pretty well, contrary to marketing imperatives and the American psyche though it may be. The part I remembered from this story: ]
A person who begins 20 percent caloric restriction at age 18 might live to be 140 years old, Walford has estimated. At 73, he himself eats only 1,800 calories a day, as opposed to the 2,000 to 2,800 normally recommended for a man his age.
Brian Delaney, a 34-year-old graduate student in philosophy at the University of Chicago, is among those who have put Walford’s ideas into practice. Five feet 11 inches tall, Delaney weighs 137 pounds, down from about 150 when he started the plan a few years ago. He said he eats two meals a day, feels well and has plenty of energy. “I got used to being hungry all the time,” he said. “There’s this pit in your stomach, but you get used to it. I think of it as a pit of immortality.”
Delaney said he was convinced that caloric restriction could prolong life. Nonetheless, he said he hoped researchers would find an another way of achieving the same thing. “I don’t really want to look this skinny,” he said. “It’s not so attractive.” At times, he said, he has looked like he had AIDS, and people have worried about him. “I’m into this whole life extension thing, living to be 120 or 130 or 150, but the idea of having to live like this for another 80 or 90 years is unappealing.”
Roth said he did not find it appealing, either. “We all like food, and that’s why we’re all working hard on the mechanisms, because we’d like to continue to eat,” he said. |
