The CIA set caloric intake guidelines – a recommended minimum was 1,500 calories daily – and relied on medical personnel, who are sworn to do no harm to their patients, to ensure detainees did not lose more than 10% of their body weight.
They might even, if the mechanism can truly be understood, be able to reproduce, as well.In Dr Sinclair's view, the way caloric restriction prolongs life revolves around genes for proteins called sirtuins.
In any case, my understanding of the relevant bits of anthropology is that hunter-gatherer women generally specialise in reliable food-gathering, while men generally specialise in unreliable hunting, and it is by no means unusual for women to contribute more than men to their group's caloric budget.
Other work on the effects of caloric restriction, consuming red wine and altering genes in yeast, mice and nematodes has shown promise in slowing senescence.The approach advocated by Aubrey de Grey of the University of Cambridge, in England, and presented at last week's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is rather more radical.
"Caloric restriction", as it is known in the trade, works for everything from threadworms to mammals (people included, as far as can be ascertained without the luxury of controlled experiments).
Previously, the nearest species to a human for which caloric restriction had been proved to work was a mouse.
If anything, the calories per order went up a smidge.New York City required establishments to publish the calorie content of the food they offer, thinking that with this information available caloric intake would go down.
An apparent win, then, for caloric restriction though it will not be possible to say for sure until all members of both groups have died and the extra years of life (if any) of the experimental subjects can be known precisely.Semi-starvation is not, however, a course of action most people would be willing to undertake in the hope that it might prolong their lives.
Largely in vain: compounds like these are absorbed and distributed through the body in such a way that they have little impact on individual cells.What does appear to work, at least in mice and monkeys, is to reduce their caloric intake by at least a third.
Though paternalistic bans on super-size sodas remain unpopular, voluntary measures to make food healthier and less caloric are gaining ground among food and beverage companies.
And no one had anything nice to say about former-mayor Michael Bloomberg's crusade to fight obesity by banning big, caloric fizzy drinks in New York.
