Less means more

Rats are not especially attractive animals. Yet studies about their habits may have significance for us.

Often people say, "Maybe that's what they found out about rats, but it doesn't necessarily apply to humans."

All right. I'll agree with you on that point. After all, people aren't rats. And the results of any experiment can be safely applied only to the kind of animal under study.

However, it's not ethical to experiment with humans. At least, not when their health or well-being may be endangered thereby. So we are forced to use animals in our research whose bodily functions and response to chemicals are similar to those of humans—like rats. Thus we can be reasonably confident that our observations of experimental animals can be applied to humans.

With that said, let's go on with our story. For some years it has been known that restricting the food in take of animals after weaning can lengthen their life span. Not known is what happens to an animal left to select his own diet under natural conditions.

Interestingly, rats given a choice do have different preferences in type and amount of food selected—with no one around to keep an eye on them.

Close observation of the rats and daily measurement of their food in take revealed that they fell into a number of fairly distinct groups, even though no two rats had the same feeding habits. By the time they reached "middle age" their dietary habits were well established and remained quite stable until death.

Their ages at death ranged from 317 to 1026 days. Interestingly, those rats that ate the least amount of food each day lived the longest (figure 1), and those that ate the most died youngest! (M. H. Ross and G. Bros., "Food Preference and Length of Life," Science, 190:165- 167, Oct. 10, 1975.)

Are there implications for us? Can our dietary habits, particularly the number of calories, influence how long we live?

Apparently so. Obesity itself is a health risk. High-calorie foods, such as sugar-laden foods and fatty meats, if overused, create problems that often lead to disability and premature death.

Among our concerns about the early training of children, we should give careful consideration to how they should eat.

The wise man said: "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it" (Prov. 22:6).

The book selected by Adventists as last year's health book of the year states: "The first education children should receive from the mother in infancy should be in regard to their physical health. They should be allowed only plain food, of that quality that would preserve to them the best condition of health. ... A judicious mother will act in training her children . . . for their future good. And to this end she will teach her children the important lesson of controlling the appetite, and of self-denial, that they should eat ... in reference to health. . . . Care and regularity in the feeding of infants will not only promote health . . . but will lay the foundation of habits and will be a blessing to them in after years.

"As children emerge from baby hood, great care should still be taken in educating their tastes and appetite. . . . Let it be made plain that they are denying themselves only that which would do them harm." —Counsels on Diet and Foods, pp. 228-231. This wise counsel is especially being reemphasized in current literature on weight control. Child hood or juvenile obesity is coming to be recognized as more difficult to treat and consequently probably more dangerous than adult onset obesity.

It is also now pretty well accepted in medical circles that additional fat cells are formed through the early years of life, perhaps even until the child becomes an adult. If a young child is overfed, not only are existing fat cells inflated but the probability is that new fat cells are being manufactured, and this predisposes the child to overweight.

An intensive study conducted in Maryland by Drs. Abraham and Nordsieck indicates that more than 80 percent of the grossly obese children stayed that way as adults.*