X-Message-Number: 993
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics,alt.support.diet
Subject: CRYONICS Calorie Restriction
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 92 15:08:09 -0400
From: 

Has anyone actually tried diets along the line of what's described in
"The 120 Year Diet" by Walford?  Any successes, failures, or advice to
report? 

(For those unfamiliar with this: The idea is that if you gradually
reduce your calorie intake below normal levels without reducing the
intake of any other nutrients, you'll live longer, if you're a rat.
There's a good chance you'll live longer if you're a human, too,
although naturally the experiment on humans is too time-consuming to
actually do.  I've heard of a relevant experiment on primates, though.
Don't do this without some study; reducing calorie intake too fast or
too much is harmful.)

Since I couldn't get many of the ingredients required by the diet
described in his book, I bought his software and tried to design my
own.  His software has a relatively limited selection of foods, but it
does know about most of the known nutrients in each food.  Since it
deals with the essential amino acids separately, you'll know if your
proteins are balanced.  (All the daily menus I worked out had adequate
protein without any hassle.)

Unfortunately his software tries to get 100% of the RDA of each
nutrient every day, instead of averaging 100% of the RDA per day over
the course of a week or so.  Trying to get everything to balance out
every day lead to unpalatable things on the food list, like 6 servings
of oatmeal.  

In general the menus in his book involved eating vast quantities of
low-calorie food.  I just couldn't push that volume of food through my
digestive tract as quickly as I was supposed to.  For instance, his
two-serving scallop casserole is more like four servings.

Ideally I would like to get a nutritionally complete two-week cycle of
foods I like and can find, with (if necessary) somewhat more calories
than Walford's menus, but still fewer calories than an ordinary menu.

Hmm, maybe I should take some diets from existing diet books and use
Walford's program to find what nutrients are missing, and then fix
them.

Tim

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