ABSTRACT
Nutrition is probably the easiest intervention with which to affect the aging process. In addition, nutritional manipulations have been the only environmental variable shown to consistently increase the life span of laboratory animals. Dietary restriction has been shown to increase the life span of laboratory animals. The data described by L. Franks et al. may suggest that various dietary regimens which increase life span do so by independent mechanisms which result in differential effects on age-associated disease incidence and prevalence or physiological and biochemical alterations. Charles H. Barrows and L. M. Roeder show that the biochemical characteristics associated with dietary restriction were the same in 12-month-old animals as in weanling animals. In young growing animals dietary restriction has been shown to reduce body temperature, increase basal metabolic rate, delay the onset of a variety of diseases, and delay age-associated changes in biochemical, immunological, and morphological variables.
