By David Liu, Ph.D. and editing by Elizabeth Hutchinson

Tuesday June 14, 2011 (foodconsumer.org) -- If you want to be healthy and live longer, you may want to consider a calorie-restricted diet. It is a fact that calorie restriction extends the lifespan of animals like rats and fruit flies. But, it's likely that it helps humans as well.

A new study in the April 2011 issue of Cancer Prevention and Research now suggests that calorie restriction can also help prevent serious diseases like cancer. 

The study demonstrated that "calorie restriction in laying hens resulted in a near five-fold reduction in OVAC (epithelial ovarian cancer)."

OVAC is highly lethal and causes more deaths among women than all other gynecologic cancers combined, according to the authors of the study at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC.

The study, led by D.K. Carver and colleagues, demonstrated that calorie restriction can reduce the risk of epithelial ovarian cancer and other cancers. 

In the study, laying hens were assigned to receive two types of diets, one with preventative agents and the other without. Hens were either allowed to eat without restriction or eat only 45 percent of the calories that they were supposed to eat.

The researchers found that the death rate, or mortality, of hens in the calorie restriction group was only about half that of those on a full diet. Hens that ate whatever amount they wanted increased their body weight to 1.892 kilograms, while those on a calorie-restricted diet maintained their body weight at 1.423 kg.

Calorie restriction reduced the rate of ovulation by 64 percent in hens. In other words, the calorie-restricted hens produced 64 percent fewer eggs than those on full feed.

The researchers believe repeated ovulation damages the ovarian epithelium, thereby increasing the risk of cancer, and because caloric restriction inhibits ovulation, hens on a calorie-restricted diet should be less likely to develop cancer.

Indeed, the study showed that 33.3 percent of hens on full feed developed reproductive cancers. This is compared to only 10.3 percent of hens on the calorie-restricted diet.

Also, among calorie-restricted hens, only 6.3 percent were found to develop ovarian adenocarcinoma, compared with 26.3 percent among the hens on full feed. 

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