Meal Frequencies II

An interesting thing happened last week. I usually bring some fruit and nuts for lunch when I go to work at the student union, but one day I forgot to do that. And I noticed that I actually got less hungry in the afternoon when I didn't eat lunch at all compared to when I had the fruits and nuts. Perhaps two meals per day really is the way to go for me.

Hello again

Hi everyone. I just wanted to say that I'm not dead - I've just been busy. I've recently been elected president of the Student Union of Science here at Lund University, and there's a lot to do and to learn. I'm still practicing CRON, and I'm still healthy and doing well.

CR works in primates!

CR has previously been demonstrated to work in a variety of organisms, from roundworms to mice, and now it seems to be working in rhesus monkeys as well! According to a study that is to be released soon, CR drastically lowered mortality, age-related diseases, and decline of muscle and brain tissue. In their late twenties (the average lifespan of rhesus monkeys is 27), 63% of CR:ed animals are still alive, compared to 45% of animals in the control group, and the CR monkeys look a lot healthier than their non-CR:ed counterparts. See the below picture, for instance:

Here's another article about it.

This is the most solid suggestion yet that CR could work in humans in a similar way. And yet some say that this study could have been done better; scientist and CR expert Michael Rae said this: "[...] the actual differnce in Calorie intake has dwindled down to almost zero, because none of the animals are very engaged with their rather monotonous and restricted lives, so the AL eaters aren't finishing their meals a lot of the time; the food isn't the best, nutritionally, and there were definitely some specific nutritional problems (such as excessive retinol, early on) in the diets; we don't really know how how to best care for and feed nonhuman primates, nor how long they can live in captivity, because so few have been studied; and above all, there's evidence that the AL group probably should've been restricted a bit more and the CRed animals restricted even further in turn (no effects on menstruation in the females, and probably some of the AL diabetes is related to modest overweight)."

Despite that, CR seems to be working very well for the monkeys. One might only guess how well it could work in CR:ed humans, who take care to get optimal nutrition and otherwise eat as healthy as possible, while maintaining a low calorie intake. This has reinforced my belief that CR works in humans as well as in other organisms.

Meal Frequency

How many meals should I eat per day? I've been thinking about that for some time now, and though I've been eating three meals per day for a long time now, I'm considering going down to 2, mainly because it's so much easier - then I just have to eat once in the morning and once in the evening, and I can avoid all the hassle of bringing a lunch box to school/work or having to go home during the lunch break to cook. Of course, the two meals would be correspondingly larger than before, so that I maintain my daily calorie intake. The question is: Will I be able to stay satiated all through the day on breakfast?

How does your day look like in terms of meals? How many meals do you eat per day, and what has led you to that? Please share your thoughts.

Link Collection #1

Here's something I was inspired to do by a blog post at Free the Animal, a blog that I follow. It works like this: every time I find a link to something interesting, I'll paste it in a blog post draft (with a short commentary), and when I get enough links (I'll try four for now) or more links, I'll publish the post and begin a new draft. I guess the link to the FtA post counts as the first link, so three more will follow. (I guess you could call this a modified version of the blogroll, since it can also contain non-blog links.)

Even though it's largely unrelated to CR, I found this post at the Hunter-Gathering blog very interesting. The blog's author is building a full-scale treehouse that he plans to live in for six months, subsisting entirely on the foods nature has to offer and things he can sow and manage himself in a small patch. I wouldn't try it myself at the moment, but it certainly seems like a fun challenge. I wonder how he'll manage showering and things like that? I think his house is near a river, so I guess he'll use that.

I also found a nice podcast on the role of dietary fat and how it relates to cholesterol, among other things. It may be a bit biased towards low-carb diets, but I found it interesting nevertheless.

Lastly, Mark Sisson (of Mark's Daily Apple) thinks we should all go out and play a bit more. I entirely agree! Anytime when you don't have anything else to do is a good time to spontaneously go do something fun. And the warm summer weather isn't exactly making it more difficult :)

That's all for now. Sorry I haven't posted in a while, by the way, but I've been busy and travelling and stuff.

Bad Science?

I came across an interesting (but not very useful, as you will see) study through the CR Society archives a few days ago:

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Shiraev T, Chen H, Morris MJ. Differential effects of restricted versus unlimited high-fat feeding in rats on fat mass, plasma hormones and appetite regulators. J Neuroendocrinol. 2009 Apr 13.

Abstract: The rapid rise in obesity has been linked to altered food consumption patterns. There is increasing evidence that in addition to total energy intake, the macronutrient composition of the diet, may influence the development of obesity. Objective: To examine the impact of high dietary fat content, under both isocaloric and hypercaloric conditions compared with a low fat diet, on adiposity, glucose and lipid metabolism, and brain appetite regulators in rats. Method: Male Sprague-Dawley rats were exposed to one of three diets: control (14% fat), ad libitum high-fat palatable (HFD, 35% fat), or high-fat palatable restricted (HFD-R, matched to the energy intake of control) and were killed in the fasting state 11 weeks later. Results: Body weight was increased by 28% in unrestricted HFD fed rats, with nearly a tripling of caloric intake and fat mass... (read the whole abstract here).

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On first glance, this study might appear to support the idea that a low-fat diet is good for preventing heart disease, but let's look a bit closer. If you read the whole paper (available at the link to the archives), you'll notice that the "high-fat palatable diet" mentioned in the abstract is further described as a "cafeteria-style diet", consisting of "meat pies, cakes, biscuits, chips [...] ad libitum". This was compared with the control diet of standard laboratory rat chow.

I mean, come on! Anyone eating that kind of diet is bound to end up with serious health problems, so it's no surprise that the rats did just that. The diet, if you can call it that, consisted exclusively of pies, cakes, biscuits and chips, all of which are high in simple sugars, starches, saturated fats, and (most prominently) trans fats, as well as very low in nutrition. It's far worse than even the standard American diet (SAD). Yet the researchers blame only the increased proportion of total fat in the diet (35% vs. 14% in the control diet) for the effects! I think you see what I mean now. I don't think this study actually tells us anything about the role of dietary fat in health, since there were so many other factors which could have (and most probably did) influence the outcome of the study, all of which were likely more important than total fat content.

Perhaps a more appropriate title would have been, as Michael Rae suggested in the archives: "Total crap, junk-food diet, far worse even than SAD, really buggers up sedentary rats." That's really all that this study shows. I wish they had put the rats on a healthy, nutritious high-fat diet instead, with a reasonable amount of protein, and compared that with a healthy, nutritious low-fat diet. Then we would have learned a lot more.

Calcium

How much calcium do we really need? That's a question I've been pondering for some time now. We're always told that calcium is important for building strong bones, and that dairy is the main source of dietary calcium. But the fact is, most people on the planet don't consume dairy products at all, and they get along just fine. In fact, even though the U.S. is among the countries with the highest calcium intake, it also has some of the highest rates of osteoporosis. So it turns out that other things besides calcium may be just as important for bone health.

One of those things is vitamin D. Low blood levels of vitamin D has been linked to osteoporosis (low bone density), probably because vitamin D influences the metabolism of important minerals such as calcium and phosphorus. Speaking of which, phosphorus is probably important for bone health too, since 85% of the phosphorus in your body is bound to the skeleton. Other minerals, such as magnesium, zinc and iron, may also play a role in bone health [1].

Additionally, there is something called the "acid-base balance", or in other words, the pH level in the body. The theory is that certain foods (e.g. dairy) are "acidic" in that they lower the body's pH level (particularly pH of the blood), while others (e.g. fruits and vegetables) are "alkaline", doing the opposite. This relates to bone health in the sense that a low pH leeches calcium from the skeleton, making it more brittle, while a higher pH leads to better binding of calcium to the bones. Interestingly, according to this theory, dairy products are some of the most acidic foods around, so even though they are promoted for having a lot of calcium, it might not be as well absorbed as we think.