Version 1
: Received: 16 September 2020 / Approved: 17 September 2020 / Online: 17 September 2020 (11:22:37 CEST)
Version 2
: Received: 25 July 2022 / Approved: 26 July 2022 / Online: 26 July 2022 (08:51:22 CEST)
Deere, J.A.; Xu, C.; Adelmant, C.; Aboobaker, A.; Salguero-Gómez, R. The Hunger Games as the Key to Happily Ever After? The Journals of Gerontology: Series A 2023, doi:10.1093/gerona/glad100.
Deere, J.A.; Xu, C.; Adelmant, C.; Aboobaker, A.; Salguero-Gómez, R. The Hunger Games as the Key to Happily Ever After? The Journals of Gerontology: Series A 2023, doi:10.1093/gerona/glad100.
Deere, J.A.; Xu, C.; Adelmant, C.; Aboobaker, A.; Salguero-Gómez, R. The Hunger Games as the Key to Happily Ever After? The Journals of Gerontology: Series A 2023, doi:10.1093/gerona/glad100.
Deere, J.A.; Xu, C.; Adelmant, C.; Aboobaker, A.; Salguero-Gómez, R. The Hunger Games as the Key to Happily Ever After? The Journals of Gerontology: Series A 2023, doi:10.1093/gerona/glad100.
Abstract
The world’s human population is reaching record longevities. Consequently, our societies are experiencing the impacts of prolonged longevity, such as increased retirement age. A major hypothesised influence on ageing patterns is resource limitation, formalised under calorie restriction theory. This theory predicts extended organismal longevity due to reduced calorie intake without malnutrition. However, several challenges face current calorie restriction (CR) research and, although several attempts have been made to overcome these challenges, there is still a lack of holistic understanding of how CR shapes organismal vitality. Here, we conduct a literature review of 222 CR peer-reviewed publications to summarise the state-of-the-art in the field. We use this summary to highlight challenges of CR research in our understanding of its impacts on longevity. Our review demonstrates that experimental research in this field is biased towards short-lived species (98.2% of studies examine species with <5 years of mean life expectancy) and lacks realism in key areas, such as stochastic environments or interactions with other environmental drivers such as temperature. We argue that only by considering a range of short- and long-lived species and by taking more realistic approaches can the impacts of CR on longevity be examined and validated in natural settings. We conclude by proposing experimental designs and study species that will allow the discipline to gain a much-needed understanding of how restricting caloric intake affects long-lived species in realistic settings. Through incorporating more experimental realism, we anticipate crucial insights that will ultimately shape the myriad of socio-bio-economic impacts of senescence in humans and other species across the Tree of Life.
Keywords
life history; longevity; senescence; stochastic environments
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Commenter: Jacques Deere
Commenter's Conflict of Interests: Author