More “let’s all go veggie” bollockery.
Reducing consumption of a protein found in fish and meat could slow the ageing process and increase life expectancy, according to the research.
Scientists have long believed that an ultra low calorie diet – aproximately 60 per cent of normal levels – can lead to greater longevity.
Riiiight… So it’s all about quantity rather than quality is it? Well, yes, actually.
Studies in animals including monkeys have shown that reducing food intake can benefit health and increase lifespan.
Researchers have found that reducing calories by as much as 30 per cent could reduce risks of developing heart disease or cancer by half and increase lifetimes by nearly a third.
The extreme diets – just above malnutrition levels – add an extra 25 years to the average life in Britain with the vast majority of people living to their 100th birthday
So if we starve ourselves, we get to live to 100. Great. Terrific. Can’t wait. Frankly, I’d rather live fast and die young(ish). Life is for enjoying, not enduring. If I have a straight choice between a well lived life, one where the years of my existence hit a brick wall and fall about my feet in an undignified heap or one where I live long on a subsistence diet and bore myself to death, then the former looks pretty attractive to me.
But in a series of new experiments on fruit flies, scientists discovered that simply varying the mix of amino acids in the diet affected lifespan.
Uh huh? Fruit flies, eh?
Although flies and people are very different…
You don’t say? Okay, okay, I’m slightly misrepresenting him here and openly taking the piss, but really, quality is more important than quantity. Contrary to the belief of scientists and politicians, we are not all looking to spend eternity in our bath-chairs holding back the inevitable. Some of us, many if not most, I suspect, would rather make the most of the time allotted us and take the chance that one day it will kill us. We have to die of something after all. Might as well go out enjoying it.
To be honest, I’d rather go quickly than have a long drawn out extinguishment. But that’s me speaking now, ask me again when I’m 80, the answer might be a bit different.
Being eighty and in full health and fitness is one thing. Simply clinging on to life isn’t my idea of enjoyment. Longevity merely for the sake of it is something I’ll pass on, I think.
No sacrifice is worth n extra years living in a state care home as a dribbling wreck.
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