Lard makes hungry mice live longest

Over the past few weeks I've been looking for papers where Barja's group might have run longevity experiments. This does not seem to have been their forte. They have done lots of observational comparative studies looking at long vs short lived species and lots of interventions to modify mitochondrial membrane lipid composition but no hard-core lifespan measuring studies that I can find.

So Barja threw in the rather off comment about avoiding "excessive intake of animal proteins and fats typical of western diets" in his review without obvious direct testing of these variables on lifespan.

I have to leave the mechanism of calorie restriction, aka protein restriction, aka methionine restriction for another day.

What we can do today is to look at Barja's dreaded animal fats. Like lard.

The data are, sadly, only available from CRON fed mice. This is the study:

The Influence of Dietary Fat Source on Life Span in Calorie Restricted Mice

Diets had their fat source modified thus and also had their calories restricted by 40%:

"The modified AIN-93G diets (% of total kcal) each contained 20.3% protein, 63.8% carbohydrate, and 15.9% fat. Soybean oil was the dietary fat in the control group (standard AIN-93G diet). The dietary fats for the CR groups were soybean oil (high in n-6 fatty acids, 55% linoleic acid, Super Store Industries, Lathrop, CA), lard (high in monounsaturated and saturated fatty acids, ConAgra Foods, Omaha, NE) and fish oil (high in n-3 PUFAs, 18% eicosapentaenoic acid, 12% docosahexaenoic acid, Jedwards International, Inc., Quincy, MA). To meet linoleic acid requirements, the fish oil diet contained 1% (w/w) soybean oil".

Here are the survival curves:

The left hand curve of green circles is from (nearly) ad-lib feeding of crapinabag. The yellow squares showing best survival are from feeding the dreaded animal fats from lard, combined with CRON. The fish oil group, full of EPA and DHA, did worst of the three CRON groups with soy oil being intermediate.

I think beef dripping would have done better than lard and beef suet even better still, but then I would think that.

Peter, saturophile.