Holding back on the chow may be key to prolonging your pet’s life. That’s the message from a recently completed study of Labrador retrievers.
Since the 1930s, researchers have collected evidence that restricting the diets of rodents and invertebrates can extend their lives and delay the onset of age-related illnesses. In tests, the animals are typically fed a nutritionally complete diet that contains up to 40 percent less carbohydrate, fat, and protein than that given to control animals (SN: 10/5/91, p. 215). A handful of experiments in longer-lived animals, mainly rhesus monkeys, have yielded preliminary evidence that the diet-longevity link extends to larger animals, but most of these studies remain years away from completion (SN: 11/25/00, p. 341: Low-cal diet may reduce cancer in monkeys).