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# Calorie restriction extends your lifespan by 20%
- URL: https://www.foodconsumer.org/calorie_restriction_extends_your_lifespan_1028141003/
- Published: 2014-10-28T11:02:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-22T16:16:14.000Z
- Description: In mice, a low-fat diet with calories cut 30 percent for life extended lifespan by about 20 percent, and exercise added nothing on top of it; exercise alone lengthened life 16 percent on a high-fat diet. The low-calorie diet also shifted gut bacteria toward lactobacillus.
- Author: Food Consumer
- Tags: Diet, Nutrition, #vivvo-import

Tuesday Oct 28, 2014 (foodconsumer.org) -- A Chinese study reported in 2013 in Nature Communication suggests that people eating a low fat diet with calorie reduced by 30% for lifetime can extend their lifespan by 20%. This study was conducted in mice. 

Following this particular dietary practice, you do not have to excise to experience the benefits. Actually, physical excise does not help a person's lifespan when he follows this calorie reduced low fat diet, according to the study results.

Eating a low fat low calorie diet is not the only way to extend a person's lifespan. Daily physical excise can too extend mice's lifespan by 16% even if they eat a high fat diet, the study finds.

The study led by Professor Liping Zhao at Shanghai Jiaotong University further finds that a low fat low calorie diet alters the gut microbiota and promotes the growth of beneficial bacteria such as lactobacillus and eliminates harmful bacteria.

Zhao et al. find a high fat diet promotes harmful bacteria that produce endotoxin promoting obesity and metabolic syndrome. They have identified a toxin produced by a harmful bacterium isolated from an obese human and demonstrated that germ-free mice receiving the toxin became obese and insulin resistant.

Other recent studies have suggested that low calorie diets can reduce risk of various diseases such as cancer. All studies suggest that following a low fat and low calorie diet can not only allow a person to live longer, but also live healthier.

The fat content in the tested low fat diet is 10% while the fat content in the high fat diet is 60%.

Zhao was cited as saying that although calorie restriction proves to be effective in extending an animal's lifespan, people who want to follow a low fat low calorie diet should make sure that they still have sufficient nutrients of all sorts. (David Liu, PHD)