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This is, after all, the man who has long claimed that calorie
restriction with optimal nutrition (what he calls the CRON diet) can help
people live for 120 years -- possibly even longer. This is also the man
who, in an era of rapidly increasing obesity, has made the radical
suggestion that Americans maintain a weight 10% to 25% below their "set
points" (the weight the body naturally gravitates to). So who wouldn't
want to see if the man practices what he preaches?
Actually, Walford's lunch surprises me a little. On his plate, prepared
by one of the two office assistants at his Venice Beach, Calif., home, is
a meal not mentioned in his new book, Beyond the 120-Year Diet, an
update of his 1986 book, The 120-Year Diet. It consists of a small
slice of gourmet pizza topped with vegetables, grilled squash, and a
fistful of penne pasta with tomato sauce. Walford assures me this is not
his usual midday repast: "I ate out last night and there were leftovers,
so I brought them home." But the man is not the ascetic one might assume
him to be. In fact, a lot of assumptions about Walford are off the mark.
Not Your Average White-Coated Lab Rat
To be sure, Walford, 76, is unconventional. He sports a shaved head and
a walrus moustache, and he lives a rather bohemian existence in a
boarded-up commercial building just steps away from the Venice boardwalk
-- a place where people come to whirl on skateboards, get tattooed, and
sometimes espouse kooky theories. He has published fiction and poetry,
dabbled in performance art, and among other expeditions, has trekked
across Africa.
Yet Walford has also maintained a distinguished career as a
gerontologist for more than 50 years. An adventurer as well as a
scientist, he is best known for his two-year stint in Biosphere 2, the
utopian greenhouse experiment in self-sustenance conducted in Oracle,
Ariz. Because many of its crops failed, the Biosphere inadvertently became
a human study in severe calorie restriction -- in fact, the only such
study that has been done on humans to date.
But Biosphere also took a serious physical toll on Walford. Working six
days a week in the fields left him with an injured back that ultimately
required surgery. Worse, he suffered nitrous oxide poisoning because the
structure's glass enclosure prevented ultraviolet light from penetrating
and dissipating the gas, an agricultural byproduct. The resulting nerve
damage has made it difficult for Walford to walk. When we meet, he sits
somewhat hunched behind his desk the entire time. He appears more frail
and diminutive than I expected.
The Science of Calorie Restriction
The notion that humans may live 50% longer if they eat less is
extrapolated from work with animals, Walford says. The first research
showing that calorie-restricted rats live longer than their regularly fed
counterparts was done in 1935 at Cornell University. Subsequent studies
over the last 65 years (Walford estimates that there are 2,000 to 3,000
papers on the topic) have produced similar results and have also indicated
that animals on calorie-restricted diets have a lower incidence of cancer,
arteriosclerosis, and autoimmune disease. Results have been so promising
that the National Institute on Aging (NIA) now spends $3 million a year to
study caloric restriction, mostly in rats and monkeys, and has funded
Walford's work in the past.
Walford has been doing pioneering calorie restriction work with animals
since the 1960s. He's found that the animals not only live longer, they
live better. For instance, his 1987 study in the Journal of
Gerontology found that when mice of varying ages were placed on
rotating rods to test their muscle strength and coordination,
calorie-restricted 31- to 35-month-old mice performed just as well as
their 11- to 15-month-old counterparts. Likewise, the older mice did as
well on maze tests, indicating that they had no apparent decline in mental
function. "People say they don't want to live to 120 because they think
they're going to be frail for 40 years," says Walford. "They don't realize
that calorie restriction extends the period of viability and good health."
Exactly how the CRON diet may extend life is not known, but several
theories have been proposed. "One is that animals, when faced with a
shortage of food, will rechannel energy from growth and reproduction into
maintenance and repair," says Walford. Other theories suggest that the
diet may limit cell-damaging free radicals, decrease blood sugar and
insulin, or prevent the immune system from deteriorating.
Walford concedes that we don't know for sure whether what's true for
rodents applies to humans, although ongoing studies at the University of
Wisconsin and the NIA using monkeys as subjects may give us a better idea.
The monkeys, studied for 10 years, have demonstrated a lower rate of
diabetes than their regularly fed counterparts. They've also maintained
higher than normal levels of the hormone DHEA, which is associated with
youth, according to Mark Lane, PhD, head of nutritional and molecular
physiology in the Laboratory of Neurosciences at the NIA and principal
investigator on the study.
Again, the closest thing to a human study is Walford's Biosphere
experiment. After two years of functional caloric restriction, the
inhabitants had declines in blood pressure, blood cholesterol, and blood
glucose, which Walford says are markers of aging. Lane, however, isn't
convinced -- despite his great respect for Walford's work. "The study
shows that you can produce positive health changes in people through
calorie restriction, but the data I've seen don't show anything about
aging."
His Own Guinea Pig
Walford, who is currently editing a video documentary about Biosphere 2
and doing animal research at UCLA, has himself been adhering to the CRON
diet since 1984. Today he carries about 134 pounds on his 5-foot-8-inch
frame. "My set point is about 155," he says. "I was a Big Ten wrestling
champion at the University of Chicago and I had to train down, so I know
it pretty well." To stay underweight, he consumes about 1,600 calories a
day, but says he doesn't feel deprived. "You get accustomed to it after a
while," he says. "If you change your eating habits to include more whole
food (beans, rice, vegetables, and fruit), then you'll eat less."
Walford eats out about once a week, usually at one of the
neighborhood's tonier restaurants. At home, on a typical day, breakfast
might be a banana-strawberry milkshake or half a cup of millet with wheat
germ and fruit. Lunch is a large bowl of fish chowder (made with skim
milk) and a whole-grain roll or a sardine sandwich. For dinner once a
week, Walford has a mega-salad of his own creation, consisting of an
assortment of raw vegetables (lettuce, spinach, peppers, broccoli, sweet
potato, onions, cabbage), rice and beans, and dressed with expensive (get
the best, he stresses) balsamic vinegar and olive oil. A dinner roll and
nonfat yogurt with apricots for dessert round out the meal. The diet is
hardly fit for a gourmand, but it's not quite as austere as a monk's menu,
either.
The 21st century, Walford says, will be the age of the "long-living
society." In the near future, there will be advances in modern biology
that will extend life spans. "But calorie restriction is the only thing
that we can be relatively confident works now. If you want to hang around
to take advantage of the newer techniques when they become available, this
is what to do now."
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How to live to be 120
