http://biogerontolgy...sts-stupid.htmlNow that I have your attention, I am going to very briefly review several recent papers relevant to calorie restriction research.
Time and again so called studies of “calorie restriction” (CR) have failed to implement well-designed restriction, randomizing overweight subjects instead, making them no different from the thousands of weight-loss studies. But if we ever want to confirm or refute the efficacy of CR we need high quality data. Alas, we almost never get such data. So, always remember that CR must be implemented in lean and healthy animals & humans.
Unsurprisingly, the CALERIE study did it again (1, 2). That is, failing to randomize lean people. They already once messed this up with their phase 1 pilot study, which was forgivable. At least we are getting close at a BMI of 25.1 (23.8, 26.4) and n=220, but it's not good enough. There are two reasons for this failure:
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I can't really explain why researchers do not manage to correctly study CR in humans, although I have a few ideas. Perhaps someone else has a better suggestion.
