A Little Goes a Long Way
If the refrigerator police have their way, the current weeks of bounteous holiday food and drink might simply illustrate everything that’s wrong about America. It’s not just that all that food makes you fat. It also might kill you.
Humans have been ratted out. Literally. Laboratory experiments on rodents and other animals suggest that drastically decreasing caloric intake -- in plain English, starving yourself -- might significantly increase human lifespan, to as much as 110 years, and defer heart disease and other ailments. Rats that haven’t been subjected to the spartan diet droop listlessly in their declining years, whereas rodents who have been put on the diet cavort friskily in their cages.
The National Institute on Aging has begun scientific trials involving about 200 people to see whether humans are no different from rats and other creatures in this regard. These pioneers are forgoing gastronomic pleasures to eat low-calorie diets in the hope of longer lives.
The test will take years, but presumably McDonald’s and other fast-food chains that bombard consumers with super-sized sodas and juicy hamburgers are already suffering from heartburn. McDonald’s is being sued by overweight customers. What’s next on the menu for the tort industry? Ninety-nine-pound weaklings suing because they aren’t even skinnier?
Scientists theorize that drastically restricting calorie intake may reduce production of damaging free radicals in the body by reducing metabolism. Therefore, it may be that no amount of exercise would have the same effect on longevity as semistarvation.
Whether those souls who gird themselves to follow such a diet will lead happier lives is a less answerable question. It’s also the case that something seems a little off about reducing Americans to a mass of guilt for eyeing another slice of pizza.
In the December Atlantic magazine, cultural critic Jonathan Rauch notes that according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Americans’ life expectancy has reached a high of 77 years. “If Americans are living longer ... ,” he asks, “what exactly is the problem?”
But if Americans want to both have their cake and eat it when it comes to longevity, then less may truly be more.
