Skinny Monkeys Susceptible to Fatal Gastric Bloat

On Thursday I went to Birds, a rotisserie place in Hollywood where I broke my poultry boycott to get their chicken chili cheese fries. The dish arrived so smothered in cheese that the only evidence that fries were on the plate were the vague contours of the shiny yellow blanket of melted cheddar. That there was chili underneath was a complete assumption. G'day coronary artery disease The dish even looked more artery clogging than Outback Steakhouse’s 2,900 calorie cheese fries, considered by some to be worst food in America. Nonetheless I gamely dug into my chili cheese fries but I couldn’t finish them. I was doubly ashamed: 1) That I couldn’t eat them all. Twenty years ago I would have polished off a dish like that in between gulps of Milwaukee’s Best. And 2) That I ate so much of said dish. Alone I ate what would have been a barely acceptable portion for half a dozen normal people. I disgust myself. Meanwhile there is a growing movement of “calorie restrictors.” For decades, research has repeatedly shown that if you restrict the calories of some lab animals by a third, you can extend their lifespan by 30-40%. I don’t know if it’s because everyone’s metabolism has a finite number of calories they can burn or whether it’s an insulin thing but this phenomenon has been replicated in rats, fruit flies, yeast, fish and dogs, among others. It should come as no surprise that some wacky humans have latched onto to this trick and have reduced their food intake so that they can live a few precious more years. There are books and websites based around this diet. 6’ tall, 135 pounds and 103 years old. I have poo-pooed these crazies with the rationale that if you eat less to live longer, you aren’t necessarily living better. But still, these guys could eat half a bite of foie gras or a tiny hunk of brie – so long as they adhered to their sub-1,300 daily calories – for decades after I was gone. That might not be all that bad. A recent study at the University of Wisconsin found that monkeys on a reduced calorie diet outlived their gluttonous counterparts and had lower incidences of age-related diseases such as cancer, diabetes, brain dysfunction and cardiovascular disease. Study leader Richard Weindruch says, “There is a major effect of caloric restriction in increasing survival if you look at deaths due to the diseases of aging.” The only one I distrust more than a skinny monkey is a skinny human It’s the last part of that quote that threw up a red flag. What the press release and subsequent articles failed to mention was that there were sixteen skinny monkeys who died during the study from “non-age-associated causes” who weren’t included in the data analysis. Buried deep in the New York Times article on this study was this illuminating nugget:

Some monkeys died under the anesthesia given while taking blood samples. Some died from gastric bloat, a disease that can strike at any age, others from endometriosis. When the deaths judged not due to aging are excluded, the dieting monkeys lived significantly longer.

In fact, when you include deaths not due to aging, mortality rate differences between the two groups were not statistically significant. But I guess “Skinny Monkeys Live Longer” is a sexier headline than, “Skinny Monkeys Susceptible to Fatal Gastric Bloat.” Thankfully, there are shrewd and skeptical eyes out there who can see through the hype.