(This article is in two parts.)
Did you know that there is only one way that's been proven experimentally to prolong lifespan in animals? That one way is to reduce the amount of calories in the animal's diet.
They're called "reduced-calorie diets" and they've become famous in the bio-community, because they have such spectacular results in lessening disease and prolonging lifespan.
In every species of animals studied, without exception, reducing the number of calories in the diet increased the animal's lifespan. In mammals, the lifespan would increase by approximately 30 - 50% with a decrease of 30 - 40% in calories.
There is also strong epidemiological evidence (meaning human population studies) that this is true of humans as well, though our long lifespan makes this difficult to prove conclusively as yet.
Nevertheless, the evidence is in, not only for life extension, but for disease reduction as well, in humans as well as animals: Various chronic diseases (cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, arthrtis, to name a few) are dramatically lower on a reduced-calorie diet.
All the evidence points strongly to the notion that if we want to live longer, have much less disease and more vitality—that we want to eat fewer calories than normal.
But not just any calories. The fewer calories one takes in, the more each calorie must count in terms of essential nutrients—including vitamins, minerals, fiber, phytochemicals and so on.
If we're eating fewer calories but eating refined "empty-calorie" foods such as sweets, colas and sodas, white bread, chips, white pasta, etc. we won't get the same effect at all. Indeed, all fractionated foods (where the food is refined or concentrated or processed or added to) are lower in nutrient-value than the same food as it came from nature.
Weston A. Price, early in the 20th Century, was the first to visit indigenous peoples all over the world and study their health and dietary habits.
He reported that, universally, indigenous peoples eating unrefined foods had superb health. And that when those same people were introduced to refined "modern" foods, their health deteriorated and various modern chronic diseases appeared.
This being so—as the scientist Roy Wolford has pointed out—for optimum health, vitality and longevity we want to eat foods that are calorie-reduced but that are rich in nutrients. Such foods are low in caloric-density but high in nutrient-density (ND).
It's easy to measure caloric density in a food. Indeed, there's are articles on this website on that subject. (Click on the Search button at left, type in the words "caloric density" and a clickable list will appear.)
The real trick comes in exactly how you measure nutrient-density in a food.
I greatly honor Dr. Wolford and his work, but I believe that the most accurate way to measure the nutrient-density of a food is somewhat different from his way, and so I obtain somewhat different results.
First, it seems to me that all measurable included nutrient-factors in a food should be calculated in terms of an equal caloric measure rather than an equal weight measure.
Thus, if we're using the amount of B1 or magnesium in a food, for instance, we should use the amount per 100 calories of the food. That way all foods are on an even footing, because the body doesn't measure food by weight, but by calories. The body wants to know how many nutrients it can extract per calorie.
Further, in my opinion, all the measurable included nutrient-factors in a food should be given equal influence in determining the outcome, even though these nutrients, such as vitamin A or zinc, may be on widely disparate numerical scales.
To order to accomplish this, I used a bit of Ocean Theory, which showed how to make all the nutrients in a food directly comparable in terms of influence.
Altogether, 18 different nutrients were combined together and cross-matrixed to achieve the results.
(This is the end of Part One. Go to Part Two.)
—jim sloman, for 3/15/02
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