BOSTON, Aug. 17 (UPI) -- A year-long study on how radical calorie reductions affect longevity has produced "a lot of happy campers," a Massachusetts researcher said.
For nearly a year 142 people in Boston, St. Louis, Missouri, and Louisiana have been restricting their calorie intake 10 to 30 percent to determine how much can be safely cut and whether health improves, the Boston Globe reported Tuesday.
The one-year pilot ends this fall and will most likely be followed by a longer experiment.
Susan Roberts, a nutrition professor at Tufts University outside Boston who oversees the study, said there are "no medical issues yet and a lot of happy campers."
The experiment seeks to test an increasingly popular theory that radical calorie cuts extend life, something that has been noted in non-human mammals.
For example, the Calorie Restriction Society now has 2,000 members, some of whom have cut their caloric intake by at least 30 percent.
