Bizarre Foods : The mad scientist

[bluebunny27]

Today I watched an episode of BIZARRE FOODS, it was the one where Andrew Zimmern (sp. ?) was in Tokyo, Japan.

Anyway, while he was there he met this scientist who had done tests for years and he was convinced he would live to be 140 years old at least if he ate only once per day and 800 calories max. too. Talk about the ultimate NO SNACKING rule ...

That's what he's been doing for 35 years now. I was thinking that must be HELL to live on such a low number of calories, if it was even possible .. etc. He seemed healthy and he was swimming in the pool every day at the same time too, weird to have such a strict schedule. He was sayin : "You think better when you are under water !" Good to come up with inventions. He even had a special pen and paper he would use to write under water ...

He also said he would take a sample of his blood after each meal to test ... and huh ... he would also take a photo of each and everyone of his meals (since 1975, lol !) Ok, maybe he was a mad scientist but he was also brilliant having invented all sorts of cool things, like the old 3 1/2" floppy disks everyone was using in the 90's ...

BIZARRE FOODS is presented on the Discovery Channel here.
I like watching that show.

Cheers !

Marc Wink

38 Years Old, 5'10" Tall
Nov. 1st. 2008 : 280 Pounds
Nov. 1st. 2009 : 190 Pounds
(1 Year : - 90 Pounds)

Current Weight : 192 Pounds

[wosnes]

What that man does sounds like an extreme example of calorie restriction. Google that -- there's tons of information.

[DaveMc]

I've heard of this before. I have to wonder: will you live a hundred years, or will it just *feel* like a hundred years?

[wosnes]

Supposedly it's the only thing that has been shown to actually increase the lifespan. Michael Pollan has mentioned it in both his article Unhappy Meals and his book In Defense of Food.

"Eat less" is the most unwelcome advice of all, but in fact the scientific case for eating a lot less than we presently do is compelling, whether or not you are overweight. Calorie restriction has repeatedly been shown to slow aging and prolong lifespan in animals, and some researchers believe it is the single strongest link between a change in the diet and the prevention of cancer. Put simply: Overeating promotes cell division, and promotes it most dramatically in cancer cells; cutting back on calories slows cell division. It also stifles the production of free radicals, curbs inflammation, and reduces the risk of most Western diseases.

But to your question "will you live a hundred years, or will it just *feel* like a hundred years?" I imagine it depends on your mindset and whether or not you feel like you're deprived of the things you most enjoy.

If I could restrict calories and still have bread or cookies -- I could probably do it. If I could never have bread or cookies again, I'd feel deprived and even 100 days would feel like 100 years.

This is only semi-related to this topic, but have you ever noticed how many politicians (Sen Byrd and a number of former presidents -- and their wives -- being examples) and actors live well into their 90s or longer?

Reinhard linked to an article called How to Live to be 100 some time ago. The lady whose diet they use as an example probably isn't consuming a lot of calories.

I read Dr. Weil's Eating Well for Optimum Health about 10 years ago. Throughout the book there are "healing stories" about people who have changed their life and health by making dietary changes. One in particular appealed to me. I mentioned it to a friend and the response was a very sarcastic "sounds like that calorie restriction nonsense to me." Bear in mind that the person who made that comment follows a way of eating that most would consider very extreme -- just not calorie restriction. Anyway....the man who was written about in Weil's book lived to be 96.

I've also read that while Japanese and Chinese peasants or Greek villagers may actually consume more calories than we do, when you compare calories consumed to calories burned, they consume fewer calories compared to calories burned. Our 30-60 minutes of daily activity don't compare to their 8-12 hours of physical labor.

[oolala53]

Yeah, I really don't think I want to live that long if that's what it takes--unless everyone else is eating that way, too. Don't like thinking I'm that much a part of the herd, but he can't go out to dinner much! Or maybe he just eats then...

[bluebunny27]

I've heard of this before. I have to wonder: will you live a hundred years, or will it just *feel* like a hundred years?

******** Hehe, DaveMC, your comment made me laugh ....
*HARD* !

Cheers !

Marc

38 Years Old, 5'10" Tall
Nov. 1st. 2008 : 280 Pounds
Nov. 1st. 2009 : 190 Pounds
(1 Year : - 90 Pounds)

Current Weight : 193 Pounds

[Over43]

Dr. Roy Walford suggested a diet of 1200-1500 calories day to live to what he called the "Beyond the 120 Year Diet". His motto was, "There are too many wwomen for lif to be this short." Alas Dr. Walford passed in 2003 (?) from ALS. Immediatley nay sayers pointed to his diet. I think if he could have he'd have just said, "Poop happens..."

The research on calorie restriction (with optimal nutrition) is somewhat centeralized at the University of Wisconsin and UCLA. It is quite an interesting field. Researchers have had excellent success with may flies, rats, mice, dogs, often doubling the average life span of these animals.

Also a calorie restricted diet with optimal nutrition appears to turn off tumor catalysts in a variety of different cancers.

I would imiagine that many here, just eating three plates of food a day at the breakfast, lunch ad dinner hour, are gtting some of the benefits of this approach.

[Graham]

I would imiagine that many here, just eating three plates of food a day at the breakfast, lunch ad dinner hour, are gtting some of the benefits of this approach.

Yes, assuming a standard plate size and nutrient density, larger/more active/younger people would be getting a lower % of their caloric needs compared to other No S'ers.

[DaveMc]

Of course I can only speak for myself, but for me, this would not be a moderate and stress-free life-style. It would feel to me like just another form of obsession, but this time with *not eating* instead of with eating. Food would become the central feature of my life, and I don't want it to be.

I don't know how firm the medical evidence really is, but the things cited in that New York magazine article aren't very compelling: rats and mice live longer, and some people who starved for two years in a biosphere were "healthy" in some unspecified sense. It's a *big* jump from finding that mice live longer under near-starvation diets to concluding that the same would happen for humans. Long-term longitudinal studies would seem to be the only way to really establish this, and they've only recently found people crazy enough (sorry to be pejorative, but I can't help it) to actually do this, so it will be a while before we really know anything definitive -- for all we know, the increased mass of humans relative to mice could cause side-effects of severe calorie restriction that the mice don't experience, and humans could start to show the strain after a decade or two. And one statement in that article scared the hell out of me: “When you do CR, you’re not just losing fat,†Michael explains. “You’re losing muscle; you’re losing bone.†Jeepers.

And holy smokes, what a psychological land-mine this concept must be for people with (or at risk of) eating disorders! "Who, me? No, I'm not anorexic! Heavens, no. I'm practicing calorie restriction so I can live to be 140."

Anyway, I'm definitely not willing to spend the rest of my life, no matter how long it might allegedly be, feeling like I'm about to starve.

Interesting stuff, though. It really makes you think about the Big Picture.

[oolala53]

You bring up a point that I'm not sure was addressed. Are these people gaunt? Underweight? I thought data showed that people in the underweight BMI category also had health risks. (Sour grapes?) And, if not, I think it's frightening that a person could eat that little and NOT lose even more weight. How villianous of the body to adapt-unless you've survived a crash in the Andes. If I was starving like that, I'd want credit for it- by at least looking emaciated.

Maybe then I could get my modeling career going... Oh, never mind, I'll take a life of anonymity and delicious plates of food.

[DaveMc]

You bring up a point that I'm not sure was addressed. Are these people gaunt? Underweight? I thought data showed that people in the underweight BMI category also had health risks. (Sour grapes?)

The article does bring this up: one of the guys is six feet tall, 115 points, which the author points out gives him a BMI of 15.6 (and I double-checked the math: that's correct). This is well under the 18.5 that the charts say is the low end of "normal" weight.

I'm a big BMI skeptic, on the grounds that every person should be viewed as an individual and it's always risky to make too much of a single number. But even I would concede that there's probably reason to be concerned if you are in the extreme ranges (below 18 or above 30, say). Maybe this guy is perfectly healthy, but yeah, he must be *gaunt* at that height and weight.

[oolala53]

Not that this is about BMI, but I think it's gotten a bad rap because of its exceptions and possibly because of even talking about the categories. Unless I'm an athlete or aged, it's still considered a decent predictor of risk. Why do they have to label a weight "overweight'? Why don't they just say that the risk factors are higher for higher numbers? Because statisically, they are higher. Proponents don't claim that every individual with a certain BMI is unhealthy, just that the risks go up. It's the vanity issue that makes people get up in arms, IMHO. Besides, in the long run, it's society that dictates what's considered fat and really fat, which is what deep down people think about overweight and obese, basically. I hope no one thinks of this as cruel; I'm just trying to point out what's prevalent.

Many point to the waist circumference as a better predictor, though it is criticized because the cut-off of what is a healthy one or not is debatable.

However, from The Archives of Internal Medicine:
http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/conten ... 62/18/2074

With few exceptions, within the 3 BMI categories, those with high WC values were increasingly likely to have hypertension, diabetes, dyslipidemia, and the metabolic syndrome compared with those with normal WC values. Many of these associations remained significant after adjusting for the confounding variables (age, race, poverty-income ratio, physical activity, smoking, and alcohol intake) in normal-weight, overweight, and class I obese women and overweight men.

Put the two together?

(from The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition)
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/79/3/379

Conclusions: WC (waist circumference), and not BMI, explains obesity-related health risk. Thus, for a given WC value, overweight and obese persons and normal-weight persons have comparable health However, when WC is dichotomized as normal or high, BMI remains a significant predictor of health risk.

The one that the fitness crowd likes to throw around is bodyfat and health risks, but it's even harder to find much real data (search Google Scholar, not regular google) that shows that the recommendations they make are accurate. The medical lit seems to support health for much higher bodyfat percentages than the P90X crowd tolerates. Women of all ages can be as high as 30% bf and not have health risks. The eye of the beholder may not be so generous.

[DaveMc]

Well, point taken about the vanity: I'll admit that it's at least partly a vanity problem, for me.

I guess it's not so much the BMI I have a problem with, as much as the way it's used by doctors -- namely, as an excuse not to have to think about the individual in front of them. They don't seem to understand, as you clearly do, that health problems are not gravity-induced: that is, nobody gets sick directly because they weigh a lot. The health risks are associated with the *reason* you weigh a lot, which is often because you have a lot of fat on your body, which in turn correlates with heart problems, diabetes, etc.

I've spent a frustrating couple of decades arguing with doctors that the BMI gives an inaccurate reading of where I, personally, start being health-endangeringly heavy. "Look, doc, twenty pounds overweight, I'll grant you, but you're saying I'm *forty* pounds overweight? That's crazy."

When I was in high school and doing intense martial arts training, I was at the very upper edge of what the BMI considered a healthy weight, and I would get somber warnings that I should watch my weight lest I cross that magic threshold and become unhealthy -- this at a time when to lose weight I would have had to resort to amputation.

So, sure, BMI is a good starting point for seeing where you stand. I just don't like that, all too often, it's also the final and only point: look at this chart, get the answer, next patient. (I may be slightly bitter about this -- does it show? )

[wosnes]

I stumbled across Top 10 Reasons Why the BMI is Bogus this morning.

I'll have to say that I've never paid a bit of attention to BMI -- so I couldn't tell you if it's bogus or not.

It reminds me of the story of Maximum Heart Rate, which was never intended to be "an absolute guide to rule people's training." I'd heard that heart rate as an indication of fitness was a bogus idea 10 or more years ago and the origin of that statement was one of the men who developed the formula.