The TRUTH About Calories

weightliftingdiva

Just so y'all know, mice studies are used all the time across academic disciplines, because mice are way easier to control. People (especially when it comes to nutrition studies) are downright unreliable. Mice studies are incredibly important and the backbone of a lot of scientific research. And physiologically speaking, mice operate in some pretty similar ways to humans. Don't dismiss animal research.

Mice are used because they are cheap, can be bred in large numbers, and have a relatively short lifespan. Not because they are all that similar to humans and make great models for human disease, metabolism, or behaviour.

In many ways, mice behave completely differently from humans. This is part of why there is so much difficulty translating disease treatments from a mouse model to humans - enough difficulty that labs spent millions of dollars to create mice with an immune system that is similar to humans' - only to find that didn't work out so great either.

Basic rule of thumb - animal studies should be used for testing specific biochemistry and genetics questions, and to form hypotheses. Not really for much else.

As for the journals, Cell, Science and Nature are highly political. The difference between getting into one of these journals and, say, PNAS is flashy figures and who you know. You can look at any of these journals and find poorly designed studies. Don't forget Woo Suk Hwang published fraudulant data in Science before being forced to recant. The journals are not infallible - something to always keep in mind when you read papers.

I think we agree more then we disagree...I never said mice are perfect models of human behavior. They are useful and easy to control (what I said) because of the reasons you said (cheap, short lifespans.) I never said that mice studies are the best or better compared to human studies, I said they are the backbone of a lot of research - and a lot of research straight up can't be done (ethically) on humans.

I'm not sure you're addressing me regarding the journals but I never said anything about journals. I'm well aware of how political (and elitist) the academic publication world is and how rampant corruption is.

Go_Mizzou99

But what about bacon?

sjaplo

But were the mice on the high protein diet eating at a deficit and trying to maintain muscle mass? Did they even lift?

Charlottesometimes23

Just so y'all know, mice studies are used all the time across academic disciplines, because mice are way easier to control. People (especially when it comes to nutrition studies) are downright unreliable. Mice studies are incredibly important and the backbone of a lot of scientific research. And physiologically speaking, mice operate in some pretty similar ways to humans. Don't dismiss animal research.

Mice are used because they are cheap, can be bred in large numbers, and have a relatively short lifespan. Not because they are all that similar to humans and make great models for human disease, metabolism, or behaviour.

In many ways, mice behave completely differently from humans. This is part of why there is so much difficulty translating disease treatments from a mouse model to humans - enough difficulty that labs spent millions of dollars to create mice with an immune system that is similar to humans' - only to find that didn't work out so great either.

Basic rule of thumb - animal studies should be used for testing specific biochemistry and genetics questions, and to form hypotheses. Not really for much else.

As for the journals, Cell, Science and Nature are highly political. The difference between getting into one of these journals and, say, PNAS is flashy figures and who you know. You can look at any of these journals and find poorly designed studies. Don't forget Woo Suk Hwang published fraudulant data in Science before being forced to recant. The journals are not infallible - something to always keep in mind when you read papers.

No journal is infallible but there is more to publishing in high IF journals than just flashy figures and who you know. If that's your experience, it must have been very disappointing. It certainly hasn't been mine.

I acknowledge that this is a rodent model and I don't want to argue the pros and cons, it is what it is. My take is that the study was well designed and carefully carried out.

The researchers were looking at feeding, aging, and age-related cardiometabolic health in 858 mice feed one of 25 diets that differed in macronutrients and energy. They were particularly interested in mTor, a protein that integrates cellular messages and has been implicated in human conditions as well as aging in animal studies.

The interesting things that stood out for me were.

1. Protein intake influenced feeding but fat did not. (Nothing new with the protein, but fat was a surprise)

2. Old mice ate the same amount of food regardless of energy. Younger mice ate to reach a protein target regardless of energy. (confirms the protein leverage hypothesis)

3. Chronic exposure to high-protein, low-carbohydrate diets resulted in the lowest food intakes, but elevated both mTOR and insulin, with reduced lifespan.

Results showed that healthy aging is not achieved in mice fed high-protein diets and/or diluted diets to reduce calorie intake, but rather by low-protein diets (especially those low in BCAAs), where additional energy requirements are met by dietary carbohydrates rather than fats.

The researchers conclude: A priority is to establish whether the same applies for humans, especially considering that high-protein diets are widely promoted for weight loss and health. An additional priority is to consider the makeup of lipids in the diet and the quality of carbohydrates. Given the profound effects of the balance of macronutrients on energy intake, health, and longevity, it is clear that dietary interventions aimed at influencing health or aging outcomes must be considered in the context of the underlying dietary landscape.

Meerataila

I would not put much weight into this study because, well, mice.. Many animal studies are just starting points to gauge certain things before moving on to the more expensive and demanding human studies.

That said, wasn't there a study done on mice that showed a low caloric intake is positively associated with longevity? I would be interested to see what kind of macro breakdown that study had.

Yes there is, and in monkeys, too, with one recent monkey study seeming to indicate low calorie intake does correlate with longevity.

However, I just read today that monkeys don't go into ketosis. I wonder if mice do? Seems to me that if mice don't and it's true monkeys don't, we have an issue. Not that it won't necessarily work for people, but who knows?

Kotuliak

No journal is infallible but there is more to publishing in high IF journals than just flashy figures and who you know. If that's your experience, it must have been very disappointing. It certainly hasn't been mine.

I acknowledge that this is a rodent model and I don't want to argue the pros and cons, it is what it is. My take is that the study was well designed and carefully carried out.

The researchers were looking at feeding, aging, and age-related cardiometabolic health in 858 mice feed one of 25 diets that differed in macronutrients and energy. They were particularly interested in mTor, a protein that integrates cellular messages and has been implicated in human conditions as well as aging in animal studies.

The interesting things that stood out for me were.

1. Protein intake influenced feeding but fat did not. (Nothing new with the protein, but fat was a surprise)

2. Old mice ate the same amount of food regardless of energy. Younger mice ate to reach a protein target regardless of energy. (confirms the protein leverage hypothesis)

3. Chronic exposure to high-protein, low-carbohydrate diets resulted in the lowest food intakes, but elevated both mTOR and insulin, with reduced lifespan.

Results showed that healthy aging is not achieved in mice fed high-protein diets and/or diluted diets to reduce calorie intake, but rather by low-protein diets (especially those low in BCAAs), where additional energy requirements are met by dietary carbohydrates rather than fats.

The researchers conclude: A priority is to establish whether the same applies for humans, especially considering that high-protein diets are widely promoted for weight loss and health. An additional priority is to consider the makeup of lipids in the diet and the quality of carbohydrates. Given the profound effects of the balance of macronutrients on energy intake, health, and longevity, it is clear that dietary interventions aimed at influencing health or aging outcomes must be considered in the context of the underlying dietary landscape.

Thanks for the voice of sanity in all the noise!

ahamm002

The researchers conclude: A priority is to establish whether the same applies for humans, especially considering that high-protein diets are widely promoted for weight loss and health. An additional priority is to consider the makeup of lipids in the diet and the quality of carbohydrates. Given the profound effects of the balance of macronutrients on energy intake, health, and longevity, it is clear that dietary interventions aimed at influencing health or aging outcomes must be considered in the context of the underlying dietary landscape.

Most animal studies on "longevity" are fairly useless and this study is no exception. We already know that consuming certain amounts of fruits, veggies, fiber, etc., is beneficial for human longevity. So it's no surprise that a study on mice with a "low carb" diet demonstrated reduced longevity.

It's not surprising that the longevity results are useless given that the researchers were trying to measure multiple different outcomes. They should have conducted the study with the aim of soley measuring obesity and then attempted to examine longevity with diets that are actually realistic.