The curious case of low-protein diets
knowablemagazine.org
knowablemagazine.org
In the LPHC they significantly bulked up the food with non-digestible cellulose, and the net effect was that they were basically testing calorie reduced diets twice.
We already know that a calorie deficit extends lifespan in mice, and I'm not sure what this adds.
"Protein dominates the grocery shelves"
This claim is insane. Like fully disconnected from reality.
Simple carbs and fats dominate grocery shelves. Yes, they try to upsell you on high protein alternatives as premium priced products, but about 80% of the space in a grocery store are flours / corns / oils / sugars mixed into thousands of different products.
Though what I have see so far is far from everything that could be learned from these surprisingly-humanlike mammals. Still need more research on timing. Maybe protein metabolism is not that different from the better studied methods of derailing glucose metabolism. Maybe the damage is set and done after any prolonged phase of inappropriate diet, and later minor adjustments in consumption have very little additional effect, after controlling for weight and caloric intake.
Maybe all humans need to do is watch their protein intake until puberty.. and then only 60 years later, as failing to retain muscle strength becomes more likely to kill them than any detrimental effect of excessive protein intake.
There's also an emerging literature suggesting that deficits in specific amino acids are a kind of mammalian signal to start burning fat, which might also be related. Cysteine is one, which might also explain why plant-based diets are healthier all other things being equal, because plant proteins tend to be lower relatively in cysteine. So it might not be proteins in general whose restriction results in longevity increases, just cysteine-rich proteins.
For example:
The implications here for quality of life are pessimistic. Also, the "extension" in the study is about 10%, but driving responsibly can make your car last many times longer.
You can have a keto/carnivore diet which, will minimize AGEs, is the meat/protein actually bad for you? (Assuming you avoid the std diet carb overconsumption ofc)
Protein has become pretty tightly associated in culture with healthy.
Mice have a very short window to reproduce compared to humans so n optimisation to live longer in absence of sufficient protein makes more sense.
We’re optimising quite different I would assume.
Yeah and most of it is incomplete plant protein missing amino acids.
> Protein restriction, Phillips says, is a sort of “lite” version of a more well-known longevity hack — caloric restriction.
I'm confused by this since protein is much lower calorie than fat or carbs.
Common misconception. Soybean, quinoa, buckwheat provide all essential amino acids in good proportions
almost all plant proteins contain all nine essential amino acids, just in lower proportions.