less food = more life?

This week both New York magazine & the Times have articles about calorie restriction (CR). Its premise - which may be supported by research, they're not sure yet - is that drastically reducing one's caloric intake, while still getting enough vitamins, can significantly prolong life. I find the NY mag article better because the writer actually tried the diet & spent time with people who have made it their lifestyle. By the end, he implies that he was a bit delusional & had completely lost sight of his standards for good food. One of the really fascinating points had to do with CR devotees' hope that science will keep finding new ways to prolong life quickly enough to keep them alive indefinitely. They call that reaching actuarial escape velocity, "that moment in the acceleration of biomedical progress when, for every year you live, technology adds another year or more to your maximum life span." Which is a really interesting idea, but also makes me wonder if such a life is worth living. Sure, keeping yourself in a state of near-starvation will make food taste amazing & produce a low level of constant euphoria (although that can be problematic too), but you'd give up all yummy food. You might also be cold all the time & have no stamina or sex drive. I'm not sure the tradeoff is worth it.

The Times had an article about the benefits of red wine which also addressed the CR diet. Red wine has a substance called resveratrol which can suppress the bad effects of a high calorie diet. Basically it mimics what happens to someone who follows CR, but scientists are not quite sure how it does that. That's really exciting though - maybe soon we can have the benefits of not eating very much while still eating whatever we want. I can't wait for that pill.