>>Peter:
>>>>Digging through "The Retardation of Aging and Disease by
>> Dietary Restriction" by Weindruch and Walford, they say on page
> 8:"The lifespan extending effects seem to depend quite
>> specifically on energy (calorie) restriction alone, since restriction of
> fat

>>>>protein (...), or carbohydrate (Dalderup & Visser, 1969)
>>>>*without* energy restriction does not increase the maximum
>>>>species-specific LS of rodents." The reference is "Dalderup
>> and Visser: Influence of extra sucrose in the daily food on
> the life-span of Wistar albino rats. Nature,222:1050, 1969".
>

I got ambitious & pulled the ref. above.  It is surprising that
Weindruch and Walford would have formulated the above statement
using this study, which is very flimsy support for their contention
(which is no longer a tenable position anyway since lots of more
recent studies have indeed shown that protein -and fat to a lessor
extent- is life shortening/carcinogenic).  [I should add that as
recently as 1996, Weindruch repeated this false assertion -that the
components of the diet have no impact on lifespan- in a Scientific
American article.]  In fact, the study contradicts their contention
since rats receiving no added sucrose in their diets lived much
longer than those that did.  The study was done on 88 Wistar albino
rats (susceptible to kidney disease in later life), half males &
half females, half on the control diet (containing no sucrose) &
half on the test diet (containing 15% of the calories as sucrose.
All animals were fed ad libitum.  The females did not show any
statistically significant results (although their results supported
the trend evidenced by the males), while the males clearly had
shortened lives [average lifespan: 486 vs. 566 days for the control
males].  Autopsies revealed that these males acquired kidney disease
at younger ages & died sooner than the controls.  [NB: those who
contend that individuals die of something called old age are here
confronted with clear evidence of simply accelerated DISEASE
development which brings about death.]  Female results: sucrose
diet: 582, controls: 607 days.

The diets were made of a long list of foods, almost all cooked, but
a little raw vegetable & bananas were added.  The idea was to
approximate human diets.  But the real interesting thing is these
sentences: "On stock food the animals have a longer life-span.  The
average is about 850 days for both males & females."  What their
stock lab diet was I do not know, but the authors speculated that
the drying used in preparing the diets for this study may have
degraded the food.  [I would underscore this for those who think
dried foods are comparable to raw.]  They also report that in an
earlier study they conducted, they were able to extend the lives of
rats eating the same diet used in the study, but that they had to
restrict the amounts ingested.  They were thus able to extend the
lives back up to the 850-day norm (which I assume is for ad libitum
feeding of the stock diet).  Thus this human-type diet was
life-shortening.  To be fair to Weindruch and Walford, they were
talking about the MAXIMUM lifespan of a species, but this study has
enormous relevance to us humans who eat real diets, whether we are
calorically restricted or not.  I still have no doubt that caloric
restriction is not the sole determinant of maximum lifespan, & that
the components of even a calorically-restricted diet are every bit
as important as this study shows them to be.

The study diet (again, intended to mimic human diets) included:

Dried:
bread, meat, liver, fish meal, vegetables, apples

Other foods, not specifically mentioned as dried, but generally
normally in this state [some of these were ground]:
oats, rice, barley groats, potato powder, potato starch, corn
starch, sugar [omitted in the control diet], glucose, whole milk
powder, skimmed milk powder, gouda cheese (this was a Dutch study:
got to encourage that export business), edam cheese, egg powder,
pulses, peanuts, hazelnuts, cocoa, salt

A fat mixture was added, which included:
fish oil, beef fat, lard, butter, margarine, hydrogenated fats,
peanut oil

Raw foods added:
vegetables and bananas

[All these components were thorougly blended.  Specific quantities
of all the above components are listed in the study.]

--Doug Schwartz
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