Definition
The anti-aging diet is one that restricts calorie intake by 30–50% of normal or recommended intake with the goal of increasing human lifespan by at least 30%. People on the diet also have improved health providing they consume adequate vitamins, minerals, and other essential nutrients.
Origins
The idea that a calorie-restrictive diet can significantly increase lifespan has been around since the 1930s. In 1935, Cornell University food researchers Clive McCay and Leonard Maynard published their first in a series of studies of experiments in which laboratory rats were fed a diet that contained one-third less calories (compared to a control group of rats) but still contained adequate amounts of vitamins, minerals, protein, and other essential nutrients. This calorie-restrictive diet provided much less energy than researchers had previously thought rats needed to maintain growth and normal activities. The rats on the lower calorie diet lived 30–40% longer than the rats on a normal calorie diet. Since then, more than 2,000 studies have been done, mostly on animals, about the connection between calorie restriction and increased longevity.
A reduced calorie diet was taken a step further by the University of California, Los Angeles, pathologist Roy Walford who studied the biology of aging. In 1986 he published The 120-Year Diet and a follow-up in 2000, Beyond the 120-Year Diet in which he argued that human longevity can be significantly increased by adhering to a strict diet that contains all the nutrients needed by humans but with about one-third the calories. In 1994 he co-authored The Anti-Aging Plan: Strategies and Recipes for Extending Your Healthy Years. His anti-aging plan is based on his own research and that of other scientists. Included is his study of diet and aging conducted as chief physician of the Biosphere 2 project in Arizona in the early 1990s. Walford was one of eight people sealed in Biosphere 2 from 1991 to 1993 in an attempt to prove that an artificial closed ecological system could sustain human life. He also cofounded the Calorie Restriction Society in 1994.
