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Science

'Caloric Restriction' Study Finds Surprising Health Benefits (msn.com) 174

The New York Times reports positive results from the first major clinical study of caloric restriction (funded by America's National Institutes of Health) in which 143 healthy volunteers ate (on average) 300 calories less each day: They lost weight and body fat. Their cholesterol levels improved, their blood pressure fell slightly, and they had better blood sugar control and less inflammation. At the same time, a control group of 75 healthy people who did not practice caloric restriction saw no improvements in any of these markers. Some of the benefits in the calorie restricted group stemmed from the fact that they lost a large amount of weight, on average about 16 pounds over the two years of the study. But the extent to which their metabolic health got better was greater than would have been expected from weight loss alone, suggesting that caloric restriction might have some unique biological effects on disease pathways in the body, said William Kraus, the lead author of the study and a professor of medicine and cardiology at Duke University.

"We weren't surprised that there were changes," he said. "But the magnitude was rather astounding. In a disease population, there aren't five drugs in combination that would cause this aggregate of an improvement...." The researchers looked at measures of quality of life and discovered that the calorie-restricted group reported better sleep, increased energy and improved mood.... One question the study could not answer was whether caloric restriction could extend life span in humans the way that it can in other animals... But ultimately, caloric restriction did have a beneficial impact on a wide range of risk factors for diabetes and heart disease, two conditions that cause death and disability for millions of Americans, especially as they get older.

Asked about the study, the chairman of the nutrition department at Harvard's School of Public Health questioned whether caloric restriction would be practical for most people, given that "we are living in an obesogenic environment with an abundance of energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods that are cheap, accessible and heavily marketed."
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'Caloric Restriction' Study Finds Surprising Health Benefits

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  • by Darth Technoid ( 83199 ) on Saturday July 20, 2019 @11:41AM (#58956550)

    The article fails to mention the average caloric intake for these individuals. Just knowing that someone has reduced their intake by 300 calories doesn't help us know if they were previously taking in 3000 calories a day, or 1000 calories. Two years ago, I reduced my daily intake from 2000 calories a day to half that. Guess what: I lost 50LBs, and I now fit into size 34 pants for the first time since I was a teenager. I'm 73 now.

    • by tomhath ( 637240 ) on Saturday July 20, 2019 @11:50AM (#58956602)

      The article fails to mention the average caloric intake for these individuals.

      It also fails to mention what changed to reduce the calories. Did they eat the same things, but less? Or did they cut out desserts and junk food?

      Most people would do well to replace high calorie junk with lower calorie fruit and vegetable snacks.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        It actually doesn't matter, a general caloric restriction from any baseline yields these effects, which is what the data shows here and in other studies. When they're on a controlled study diet they typically aren't getting a ton of deserts.

      • by SWPadnos ( 191329 ) on Saturday July 20, 2019 @12:23PM (#58956724)

        Both this question and the GP were answered in the article. They said that the average reduction was about 12 percent, and about 300 calories. That means that on average, the participants had a 2500 calorie diet.

        On the subject of what they ate, there were no requirements to change the composition of their diets, just to reduce the amount eaten. Many of the participants used diets like the "Mediterranean diet" in order to reduce calories, so some people did change what they ate.

        • So better diet, and weight loss. The biggest question is : why was anybody surprised that this would bring benefits ?

          • Because it is a new study!

          • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Saturday July 20, 2019 @01:08PM (#58956888)

            So better diet, and weight loss. The biggest question is : why was anybody surprised that this would bring benefits ?

            This was answered in the freaking summary:

            ”But the extent to which their metabolic health got better was greater than would have been expected from weight loss alone, suggesting that caloric restriction might have some unique biological effects on disease pathways in the body”

            No one was surprised there were benefits. The surprise was just how broad the benefits were.

          • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

            As the summary said, it's apparently surprising the magnitude of the benefits.

          • "So better diet, and weight loss. The biggest question is : why was anybody surprised that this would bring benefits ?"

            Exactly! Especially since they already saw that with their studies with mice, rats, monkeys, apes ...

            "At the same time, a control group of 75 healthy people who did not practice caloric restriction saw no improvements in any of these markers."

            Call me shocked! Do nothing and no change happens?
            Who would have thought?

      • by mspohr ( 589790 )

        They ate less... duh.

      • by robinsc ( 84714 )

        A calorie is a calorie. Just cut out whatever you want. And people if its energy rich it is nutrient rich too. Nutrient rich is as much a bad word as energy dense when you are overweight.

    • by hey! ( 33014 ) on Saturday July 20, 2019 @04:22PM (#58957626) Homepage Journal

      Easy enough to find out: read the abstract. The treatment group achieved an 11.9% reduction in calorie intake, from an average of 2467 kcal to 2170. Of course this is somewhat uninformative because men have higher caloric needs, roughly 2400 to 3000 kCal vs womens' 1800-2400.

      But even 2467 would be low for an American. Studies report that American women report consuming about 1785 kcal today and men about 2640, but that they under-report by about 25% so they actually consume more like 2380 if they're women and 3300 if they're men. This means that half of all women consume above the range that a typical woman needs to stay in to maintain stable weight; for men the average caloric intake is well above the range the need to stay within to keep their weight stable.

      The situation is probably similar, although less extreme in Europe, and if you think about the statistics it's not surprising that a relatively minor caloric intake produces a significant and measurable effect: that would move a lot of the participants from well over the stable range into the stable range. Rough balance between weight gain and weight loss likely represents what is normal for us in an evolutionary sense; continual weight gain is unnatural and never happened on a widespread basis until the 20th Century.

      So as a public health goal, getting a population to eat a few hundred calories less on average is sensible goal. But if you're a man consuming 4000 kcal/day and are not some kind of professional athlete, cutting three hundred calories is not likely to have such dramatic effects.

      • To back up your conclusions with some anecdotal data:

        I used to travel the world for work, a lot in Asia, and equally big cities and small towns. I found a lot of places, especially in Asia, that had nothing but thin healthy-looking people walking the streets.

        I quickly found a great correlation between the number of McDonalds' in the town and the percentage of obese people I'd see. Not really surprising, just jarring to actually see it so pronounced.
        • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          In case of countries like China, Vietnam etc, the issue will mostly be food quality. Common people eat food that will cause near-constant low grade to full diarrhea and absorb poorly due to this.

          McDonalds like most foreign food chans in such places will have at least some meaningful food safety standards, resulting in much better nutrient absorption.

  • If you lose 16 pounds and your condition improves, it means you were fat to begin with. Fat and obese people have higher blood pressure, higher levels of blood sugar, and their health isn't that good to begin with.

    All they found is losing weight improves one's health. Restricting calories aided in that effort.

    • by SWPadnos ( 191329 ) on Saturday July 20, 2019 @12:26PM (#58956732)
      You only had to read the summary to see that it's more than just weight loss:

      But the extent to which their metabolic health got better was greater than would have been expected from weight loss alone, suggesting that caloric restriction might have some unique biological effects on disease pathways in the body

      • Thats true, but the study itself is to some degree useless.
        I.e is this only true for a "health pyramid" diet? Does is still hold true if you change the primary source of glucose, i.e from wheat to maize or rice?
        Would that still hold true for using a Keto diet? Or any form of diet that leaves the starch-centric pyramid? How does it affect metabolizism if you do some jogging?

        What about alternating between a normal diet and periods of fasting, but at the same average calorie intake?
        Is this just the lesser effe

      • You only had to read the summary to see that it's more than just weight loss:

        But the extent to which their metabolic health got better was greater than would have been expected from weight loss alone, suggesting that caloric restriction might have some unique biological effects on disease pathways in the body

        Maybe. But there's another way to parse all of this:

        The results of the study indicate that the detriments to metabolic health due to excess body weight are more serious than previously believed.

        I mean seriously, "caloric restriction might have some unique biological effects on disease pathways in the body" is tabloid-fodder. I don't doubt that experts know more than I do, but I also know that when studies and papers are made accessible and interesting for the general public, large quantities of bullsh

    • If you lose 16 pounds and your condition improves, it means you were fat to begin with.

      What kind of an absurd claim is that. The "healthy" range for body conditions is quite large and 16pounds is a pathetic difference in a human body. Let me guess, you consider every person who doesn't look like the cover model of Men's Health magazine to be "fat".

  • by Feneric ( 765069 ) on Saturday July 20, 2019 @11:49AM (#58956594) Homepage
    Research was already done on this back in the '80s and '90s by Roy Walford, one of the Biosphere 2 crew. In fact at one point he put the entire crew on such a diet because of shortages, and they all saw the same signs of health improvement as shown in this new study. The only difference I see here is that it's finally being expanded to a larger test group and getting the proper recognition it deserves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
    • by SlaveToTheGrind ( 546262 ) on Saturday July 20, 2019 @01:22PM (#58956940)

      Roy Walford died from ALS, which, ironically enough, may have been caused and/or accelerated by his practice of CR [springer.com].

      It's also become increasingly clear over the past couple of decades that CR is correlated with significant decreases in bone density [jamanetwork.com].

      It's probably a useful tool in moderation -- much like many other dietary techniques -- but it's not a panacea.

      • by Feneric ( 765069 )
        Nope, wasn't trying to say that it was, just that this particular set of results just seem to reproduce an earlier set.
      • by Chalex ( 71702 )

        CR is one of those nebulous phrases like "cloud computing".

        In this case they seemed to go from around 2500 calories to around 2200 calories per day, which is not "typical CR".

        Typical CR is 1000-1200 calories per day. And some studies are looking to test lower, like 800 calories per day.

        I'm not saying that CR is good, merely that you have to compare apples to apples when the phrase gets bandied about. Different studies use different amounts of calories and sometimes also different macronutrient ratios. An

        • In this case they seemed to go from around 2500 calories to around 2200 calories per day, which is not "typical CR".

          Typical CR is 1000-1200 calories per day. And some studies are looking to test lower, like 800 calories per day.

          I'd like to see those studies. In my fairly extensive experience with this subject, CR is a percentage reduction of a given individual's baseline metabolic rate, not an arbitrary number of calories. One example is here [nih.gov], under the heading "Baseline."

          Though I can't get to the full text of the study at issue here, the summary discusses the participants' percentage reduction from their normal intake.

  • i have a nutritionist friend who mentioned to me that refined sugar is as addictive as class 1 controlled substances. yet it is still legal, right? and doesn't impact our behaviour, right? (except cause massive highs, followed by huge lows... hmm, just like drugs then!)

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      The whole "war on drugs" mentality is basically not a sane one and certainly not a rational one. It is basically driven by religious fanatics that that think they have the right to control how other people are allowed to live. One of its effects is massive lying to the public about the dangers of illegal drugs and about how harmless things like sugar are in comparison. Sugar is a massive killer, far, far worse than any illegal drug.

      Now, I am not saying promote illegal drugs. I am saying make sure the inform

      • Sugar is a massive killer, far, far worse than any illegal drug.

        I doubt that injecting 100 mg of sugar will kill a person. Injecting 100 mg of heroin will.

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Sugar is a massive killer, far, far worse than any illegal drug.

          I doubt that injecting 100 mg of sugar will kill a person. Injecting 100 mg of heroin will.

          And breathing 1mg of Pu will also. Are you mentally challenged?

    • by epine ( 68316 )

      i have a nutritionist friend who mentioned to me that refined sugar is as addictive as class 1 controlled substances. yet it is still legal, right? and doesn't impact our behaviour, right?

      * Samuel Jackson as Gator [youtube.com] — 1989

      Right, he scores the bill from his bro' to go off and grab a 5 lb bag of white sugar. Actual white table sugar. Because his table sugar addiction is that strong. I've heard your argument before, and I end up doing a bigger double face-palm than Wesley Snipes in the final shot of the

      • by epine ( 68316 )

        My bad, that was Jungle Fever from 1991 not Do the Right Thing from 1989. Definitely a senior's moment there. Not quite the same league, but it was highly regarded.

    • Sugar is a first class energy provider for the body, it plays an essential role in everyone's metabolism. Saying that "it is like a drug" is as stupid as stating that water is a drug. Try being abstinent from water! And experience what a "high" you get if you get to drink some after having been thirsty for a while! Soon to be followed by a huge low when not getting anything to drink, again.

      So please, if you want to criticize the food industry for substituting all kinds of more expensive ingredients with s
    • ...and doesn't impact our behaviour, right? (except cause massive highs, followed by huge lows... hmm, just like drugs then!)

      It doesn't actually, that's a myth borne of shitty parenting:

      https://www.livescience.com/55... [livescience.com]

  • Not being a fat ass has health benefits?

    I'm shocked. Let me put down this cake I've been eating and start Keto.

  • "we are living in an obesogenic environment with an abundance of energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods that are cheap, accessible and heavily marketed."

    The chairman is right but this is a truism that has been very well known to anyone who pays attention to the topic deeper than the latest "red meat kills you" scare article in the NY Times.

    The fact is that way too many people don't know this. A "healthy breakfast" is toast, cereal, sterile nutrient-poor milk and a glass of orange juice. Maybe an egg but not too much because of cholesterol you know.

    And always: eatyourfruitsandvegatables (that is all now one word by convention due to endless repetition

    • by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Saturday July 20, 2019 @01:06PM (#58956884) Homepage
      "... that nice "natural organic" apple you ate has been bred to be about 100 times sweeter than anything found in nature?"

      I agree. It's crazy to suppose that more sugar is better.

      Utterly incompetent statement in the Lancet article [thelancet.com]: "Interpretation: 2 years of moderate calorie restriction significantly reduced multiple cardiometabolic risk factors in young, non-obese adults."

      What caused the positive results is not known. The positive results could have been from eating more vegetables, for example. There is NOTHING that indicates that reducing calories caused the entire benefit.
    • by Livius ( 318358 )

      Humans evolved to eat regular food in moderation, but to always eat as much meat and fresh fruit as was available.

      The catch is that meat and fresh fruit were always only available intermittently, so there was almost no chance to over-indulge. Those limitations no longer apply, and it gets us into trouble.

  • ...the great joke that started the Scientific American article on caloric restriction when it first surfaced as a Thing about 15 years back, and made it clear that "caloric restriction" really meant "being a little hungry all the time", was that the article started with:

    "Maybe it would just feel a lot longer..."

    • by gumpish ( 682245 )

      The benefits of caloric restriction are proof that the natural human condition is misery.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    I am flipping *sick* of the "body positive" types who bitch, and moan, about their positive life views, and how they are freed by being positive, kvetch about the least dietary restraints or comments about "do you really need a third slice" of a shared pizza. I've been on strict diets for more than 50 years. I'm diabetic. Not one of these wimpy "ohhh, I have to restrict my carbs" Type 2 diets who generally keep eating and get even worse until appendages fall off. Type 1, no natural insulin, I diet or I die

  • by stevegee58 ( 1179505 ) on Saturday July 20, 2019 @12:42PM (#58956804) Journal
    Back in the day we used to call that "going on a diet".
  • It's all about turning up the AMP-activated protein kinase A.K.A (AMPK). You could restrict calories or you could just eat healthy, avoid sugar, and take Metformin.

  • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • choose nonfat, lowfat options instead of regular

      You really could've skipped the entire list and just said "read the nutrition facts labels". Most diet food is a big sham, because they simply shrank the portion sizes and charged you extra for it. It's also fairly common for foods labeled "low fat' to have extra added sugar, which tends to negate the benefits of cutting out some of the fat.

      One of the rare exceptions is diet soda, which actually does have no calories. But because there's no such thing as zero calorie whoppers and zero calorie cake, switc

      • ...switching to diet soda alone isn't going to remedy any other unhealthy eating habits.

        True, but cutting out a few hundred calories per day (assuming you're drinking a large soda with your whopper) is still far better than consuming those empty calories in the first place. You know... baby / bath water and all that. Myself, I make my own carbonated water and skip all the soda stuff entirely.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      What horrible advice!!!

      AFAICT artificial sweeteners are poison disguised as dietary aids. Fat is a necessary part of diet (don't try thinking without it), and no-fat/lo-fat is a sign that foods have been over-processed. Grains are notoriously bad for gluten sensitive folks. And why use grease from a can when there are such wonderful things as coconut oil, palm oil and olive oil?

      Better advice:

      * eschew sugar and foods with added sugar
      * eschew overly processed foods
      * practice moderation
      * fast when convenien

    • by ChrisMaple ( 607946 ) on Saturday July 20, 2019 @07:05PM (#58958252)
      Grilling is not the best way to heat food. The locally high temperatures tend to produce carcinogenic compounds.
  • It's a flawed research, because the people weren't only restricting their calory consumption but also worked on their body with extra exercise due to being aware of the benefits.. so basing the finding on the calory restriction is flawed.
    • Re:Flawed research (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mamba-mamba ( 445365 ) on Saturday July 20, 2019 @01:36PM (#58957002)

      Yes and no. This was an intervention study where participants were divided into experimental and control groups, and a particular intervention was performed on the experimental group. The intervention was to urge them to eat fewer calories and a lot of support was given (cooking classes, etc). So we can say that the INTERVENTION seemed to work, even if we don't know for sure which parts of the intervention were most significant.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • That's a useful term! XD

  • Can this be true? A link in slashdot to an actual INTERVENTION STUDY with experimental and control groups in the field of NUTRITION where normally results of prospective studies are misrepresented as showing a causal relationship that (probably) doesn't exist in reality?

    It is almost like science.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    I still recall one day he managed to find the bag of dog food while I was out and he was laid on his side bloated, with the bag in front of his snoot still trying to eat. Most people do the same at the buffet. Food tastes good, people have no will power, people eat too much, news at 11. Worse, practically every social gatering has food involved. Marathons may be the only exception that comes to mind. Music fests, food, shopping, food, parties food, weddings, food, funerals, food, ... With overpopulation, ma

  • by TechyImmigrant ( 175943 ) on Saturday July 20, 2019 @02:31PM (#58957170) Homepage Journal

    If the food you are eating is killing you, then eating less of it will lead to an improvement. That doesn't mean calorie restriction is good. It means poison restriction is good.

    Fasting is excellent. Skip eating for 1, 2 or 3 days at a time. There are solid benefits to that and the guy that worked out why got a Nobel prize.

    But eating every day, multiple meals per day - well the stuff you are eating had better not be poisonous in some way. You are missing out on the autophagic benefits of fasting and if it's a conventional western diet, then it certainly has poisonous elements, E.G. in the sugar, p-lectins, seed oils, oxalates, endocrine disruptors and mono-fats.

  • In order to reduce your total caloric intake on a daily basis, you first have to know how much you're actually eating, and that means keeping track every single day; the vast majority of people simply won't bother themselves to do this. Second you need to know how much you should be eating, and people won't generally bother themselves to do that, either, even if it's as simple as using a some web-based calculator [tdeecalculator.net] (just an example site; there are plenty [duckduckgo.com]) to do that, taking all of 30 seconds of their time. Ov
    • load of bullshit, people who are "overweight" but not obese live the longest, that's what the CDC found. Makes sense. Eat up, indulge with real food not processed crap, and exercise. That's the real answer to good health

      • I couldn't find the CDC report, but a Lancet study showed that overweight (BMI 25-30) is worse than normal (BMI 20-25). Cited here: https://www.cardiosmart.org/News-and-Events/2016/08/Being-Overweight-or-Obese-Shortens-Lifespan [cardiosmart.org].
      • If being overweight is such an evolutionary advantage, then why do we find overweight people to be unattractive?
        I'm pretty sure you're 'overweight' and just trying to justify your own lack of personal discipline and drive to actually clean yourself up. You really should be more honest with yourself.
        Be sure to insult me vigorously and with great vitriol and prejudice, now, it'll independently verify the above.
        • guess again, I do weight training and bicycle

          but the hollywood "emaciated norm" is not a good thing, unhealthy

        • Slightly overweight people aren't married and with children? Or are most married people that was?

          Are you fascinated with a hollywood thin norm, but a virgin living in your mom's basement without children? I'm curious.

  • "volunteers ate (on average) 300 calories less each day"

    At that rate, by day 7 they will be eating approximately zero calories daily.
    It's reasonable to expect them to lose weight,
    but life expectancy would be poor.

    There was a story about an Indian guru who each day put one less grain of rice into his daily bowl. Eventually, of course, the bowl got down to one grain; and the next day he had no rice. But the gradual change had prepared him and he was able to live on sunshine for long after that.

    • by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

      I think they meant 300 or fewer calories a day. I lost about 100 Lbs eating about 500 a day over the course of 120 days. It was easy at first. Then around day 100 I was really ready to get off of it. I couldn't stand it any more at 120. I kept it off for almost 10 years. It's all in the head. I can tell you that, your mind is the worst obstacle to losing weight. Once I lost the weight I was off of BP medicine entirely. I felt wonderful. I've also helped a lot of other people lose weight.

      I can't imagine 300

  • Don't we also know all calorie restrictive diets fail in the long run, and just lead to yo yo weight gains.
  • It's not that a study showing benefits of dietary intervention with a caloric-reduction mandate doesn't add to the scientific picture. The problem with this study is that what it adds to the picture is less than what it subtracts.

    ———

    First of all, there's the ubiquitous abuse of the Morgan Spurlock protocol.

    Spurlock's film follows a 30-day period from in February/March 2003, during which he ate only McDonald's food.
    ...
    It is revealed toward the end of the movie that over the course of the di

  • If you maintained such a caloric deficit indefinitely, wouldnâ(TM)t you eventually become underweight? At some point the health benefits would be outweighed by starvation, I imagine.

  • The Life Extension crowd has been banging this drum for quite some time - I would sort of expect that they would know what they are talking about! Not to mention that an awful lot of them pay for regular checkups and blood work, so the data is already there if you want to ask...
    • The Life Extension crowd has been banging this drum for quite some time - I would sort of expect that they would know what they are talking about!

      I wouldn't. Those people are a bunch of fucking morons.

      I've followed the "life-extension" calorie restriction research in primates for a while, and the results are NOT good.

      Like, in order to achieve ANY amount of "life-extension" you have to reduce your calorie intake by 30% or more, forever.

      That is you LITERALLY have to permanently live in a state of starvation, which is also the reason the "treatment" "works" - your body thinks it's starving, so it drastically cuts back on energy expenditure. It also star

  • ...have UNIVERSALLY told me that radical caloric restriction leads to the body going into "starvation mode" and storing fat as aggressively as possible.

    So who's right here? How have all those dieticians been 100% wrong?

  • Their cholesterol levels improved

    You can't improve cholesterol levels with diet: you can reduce your overall cholesterol level altogether with HDL.

    To actually improve your cholesterol levels you need a very specialized food intake and the best at that is the food intake called "drugs", like lipitor.

    I did not even dig into the results when I knew something is fishy.

    Here is the snippet from TF Abstract:

    change scores for LDL-cholesterol (p

    You see, there is such medical measure as "LDL-cholesterol" (norm: 0-99

  • We've had studies like this coming out for years. It's never going to make the Big Mac guzzlers stop, though.

    I remember even seeing a study saying "yo-yo" dieting had some benefits vs never dieting ever.

  • Same net effect as removing all added sugar from your diet.

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