Mason Inman - science journalist

Last week I wrote about experiments with flies on dietary restriction, and how this makes them live longer.

This is old news, actually, and works with a lot of animals—including probably us. The newsy part of my article was that flies that couldn't smell food lived even longer than those on a diet, and lived a long time regardless of what they ate. This probably wouldn't work for people, though.

Anyway, Slate has an article up now by a woman who's trying out the diet restiction thing, limiting herself to 1,500 calories. Although it would take a long time for her to get any life-extenstion benefits from this, and although it would never be clear whether she lived a long time because of her diet, or her genes, or whatever—these effects show up only statistically, across a group—she's trying it out to see what it's like. If you can't enjoy your diet-restricted life, then what's the point in having more of it, right?

She writes:

By my sixth day following the calorie restriction with optimum nutrition plan, a way of eating—or not eating—in order to live to the horrifying-to-contemplate age of 120, I found myself having hostile conversations about chocolate with a dead man. The man was Dr. Roy Walford, a UCLA pathologist who is largely responsible for creating the modern science of life extension through food reduction.

Read more on Slate's website.