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Dr. Michael Greger November 19, 2014 9:30 am 85 comments

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How What We Eat (And Don’t Eat) Impacts HowWe Age

Many

studies have shown that calorie restriction, without malnutrition, can increase lifespan and lower the risk of

age-related diseases, such as cancer.

However, for many people, calorie restriction clearly has its drawbacks. In the classic Minnesota Starvation

Study, many of the volunteers suffered a preoccupation with f ood, constant hunger , binge eating, and lots

of emotional and psychological issues. Even researchers who study caloric restriction r arely practice it.There’s got to be a better way to suppress the aging engine enzyme, TOR (see Why Do We Age? for more

on TOR).

That’s why researchers were so excited about rapamycin, a drug that inhibits TOR, thin king it could be

caloric restriction in a pill. But like any drug, it a long list of potentially serious side effects. There’s got to be

a better way.

The breakthrough came when scientists discovered that the benefits of dietary restriction may be coming

not from restricting calories, but from restricting protein intake. If we look at the first comprehensive,

comparative meta-analysis of dietary restriction, “the proportion of protein intake was more important for life extension than the degree of caloric restriction.” In fact, just “ reducing protein without any changes in

calorie level have been shown to have similar effects as caloric restriction.”

That’s good news. Protein restriction is much less difficult to maintain than dietary restriction, and it may

even be more powerful because it suppresses both TOR and IGF-1, the two pathways thought responsible

for the dramatic longevity and health benefits of caloric restriction.

Some proteins are worse than others. One amino acid in particular, leucine, appears to exert the greatest

effect on TOR. In fact, just cutting down on leucine may be nearly as effective as cutting down on all

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protein. Where is leucine found? Predominantly animal foods: eggs, dairy, and meat (including chicken and

fish). Plant foods, such as fruits, vegetables, grains, and beans, have much less.

“In general, lower leucine levels are only reached by restriction of animal proteins.” To reach the leucine

intake provided by dairy or meat, we’d have to eat 9 pounds of cabbage—about four big heads—or 100

apples. These calculations exemplify the extreme differences in leucine amounts provided by a

conventional diet in comparison to a vegetarian or vegan diet. The functional role of leucine in regulating

TOR activity may help explain the extraordinary results reported in the Cornell-Oxford-China Study, “sincequasi-vegan diets of modest protein content tend to be relatively low in leucine.”

This may also help explain the longevity of populations like the Okinawa Japanese, who have about half

our mortality rate. The traditional Okinawan diet is only about 10% protein, and practically no

cholesterol, because they ate almost exclusively plants. Less than one percent of their diet was fish, meat,

eggs, and dairy – the equivalent of one serving of meat a month and one egg every two months. Their

longevity is surpassed only by vegetarian Adventists in California, who have perhaps the highest life

expectancy of any formally described population in history.

And now we may be one step little closer to understanding why populations living plant-based diet live thelongest. This reminds of the study I profiled in The Benefits of Caloric Restriction Without the Actual

Restricting.

Methionine is another amino acid that may be associated with aging. See Methionine Restriction as a Life

Extension Strategy to find out which foods to avoid in that case. Both leucine and methionine content may

be additional reasons why Plant Protein is Preferable.

In health,

Michael Greger, M.D.

PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my free videos here and watch my live year-in-review

presentations Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death,More Than an Apple a Day, and From Table to

Able.

Related:

The Anti-Wrinkle Diet

How to Slow Brain Aging by Two Years

Methionine Restriction as a Life Extension Strategy