Scientists fed fruit flies a diet to make them extra plump. In their old age, the researchers put them on a diet and found remarkable results. If the findings transfer to humans, it might mean we can improve our health at any age by cutting calories.

While fruit flies might not seem like the closest human relatives, the diminutive insects actually share about 75% of our DNA, so they are frequently used in scientific studies. They also share a fair amount of the same metabolic pathways as humans, so studies relating to diet can be particularly useful for findings that might apply to human health.

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For this go around, researchers at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine put a batch of male fruit flies on a high calorie diet to cause them to become obese. They also restricted the calorie intake of a different group of flies. The calorie-restricted flies were able to live to a maximum of 120 days, which is relatively old for the flies. The fat flies on the high-calorie diet only lived, on average, less than 80 days.

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