Research
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Hoping to learn why organisms tend to live longer if their intake of calories is restricted, researchers have made a startling discovery – in fruit flies, just the smell of food can reduce their lifespan.
“Not only can they not have their cake – they can’t smell their cake” without shortening their lifespan, said Wayne Van Voorhies, a faculty member in the Molecular Biology Program at New Mexico State University and a member of the research collaboration.
The researchers, led by Scott Pletcher of the Huffington Center on Aging at Baylor College of Medicine, measured the lifespans of different strains of fruit flies in the presence and absence of food odors – specifically live yeast, which is an important component of the flies’ diets. Exposure to food odors reduced lifespan in flies that had been subjected to dietary restriction. The reductions ranged from 6 percent to 18 percent – not as much reduction as actual consumption of more food caused, but significant enough to show that food odors have a modulating effect on lifespan.