Junk that junk food and you may extend your lifespan, says one study. Image is used for illustrative purpose.
Eating a lot of heavily processed foods are linked to a risk of earlier death, according to a study.
If you want to live longer, reduce levels of inflammation throughout your body and delay the onset of age-related diseases, eat less food, say researchers.
Ultra-prossessed foods tend to be high in sugar, salt and saturated fat.
While the benefits of caloric restriction have long been known, the new results show how this restriction can protect against aging in cellular pathways.
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"We already knew that calorie restriction increases life span, but now we've shown all the changes that occur at a single-cell level to cause that," said a senior author Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte from the Salk Institute in the US.
"This gives us targets that we may eventually be able to act on with drugs to treat aging in humans," Belmonte added.
For the findings, the research team compared rats who ate 30 per cent fewer calories with rats on normal diets.
The diet of animals in the age group of 18-27 months was controlled. (In humans, this would be roughly equivalent to someone following a calorie-restricted diet from the age of 50 to 70).