A day in the life: Fly boy

Some of you may be familiar with some of the recent research on calorie restriction and longevity. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, the basic idea is that all you need to do to live longer is starve yourself. The theory is that if you eat less, there are fewer harmful metabolic by-products causing damage in your body. My theory is that your stomach keeps holding out hoping that someday it will finally get a decent meal.

Anyway, Ben just recently finished writing a paper dealing with this very subject. Turns out, it’s not JUST about how many calories you eat – it matters what those calories are. If you’re a fruit fly and you eat a low-calorie diet of mostly carbohydrates, you live longer. If you eat a low-calorie diet of mostly proteins, you die sooner. The caveat is that the carb-flies didn’t have many kids; the protein-flies had a bunch.

So the moral of the story is this: if you want to live a long life with no kids – eat lots of bread and pasta. If you want to live a shorter life but have lots of kids – go eat some steak. [*Note: for anyone considering trying this approach to life, it has not been tested in people, yet.]