Can smelling a cheeseburger shorten your life?

[Doondoo]

The smell of beef brisket simmering in green chile sauce, pizza baking in a brick oven or cheeseburgers frying on an open grill could be shortening your life span. Granted, it's a long way from fruit flies to human biology, but a study published Friday in the journal Science Express indicates that even the smell of food can reduce the life span of creatures on reduced-calorie diets.

"It's weird," said Wayne Van Voorhies, a researcher at New Mexico State University who worked on the project. "It's unexpected."

Since the 1930s, scientists have been gathering evidence that reducing the amount of food a creature eats can extend its life span by 30 percent or more, he said.

"That's been the one method that seems to work along a wide array of organisms for extending life span," Van Voorhies said. "That's from fruit flies to mice to monkeys."

.......

In the new study, researchers at New Mexico State University, Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Houston took fruit flies on restricted diets and exposed them to the smell of food - in the form of a not-so-succulent-sounding yeast paste. Surprisingly, just smelling the paste shortened their expanded life spans, even though they_didn't eat that food, Van Voorhies said.

"So, the fly senses its environment, and if it senses the food, it abolishes most of that benefit in longevity," Van Voorhies said.

The smells didn't completely undo the benefits, but they did greatly reduce them, said Baylor graduate student Sergiy Libert, who is the lead author on the study. Fruit flies generally live about 60 days. Those on the restricted diet that didn't smell food lived longer than 80 days, Libert said.

.......

The hypothesis for why reduced-calorie diets make creatures live longer is that when cells process food, they release toxic byproducts called oxidants, Van Voorhies explained. Those oxidants can take their toll on the body, perhaps reducing life span. So decreasing the amount of food the body has to process may create fewer oxidants and extend the life span, he said.



http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/science/article/0,1406,KNS_9116_5326643,00.html

[madame defarge]

1. Only if you're hit by a car on your way to get the burger. n/t

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

2. You know...

This is exactly the kind of article that makes me want to beat up a science writer. Fruit Flies!=Humans.

[The Straight Story]

3. outlaw cheeseburgers in bars - for the good of people, we must rule them with iron fist

no smoking, cheeseburger smells, beer, tv, or anything else that may allow them to have their body die before we are done using them for our labor! Seig Heil!

:rofl:

[woo me with science]

4. OMG WE HAVE TO STOP SECOND-HAND CHEESEBURGERS!!!!!!!!

:rofl:

[The Straight Story]

5. No eating them in cars, or cooking them in attached condos, or near kids

soon, we will all have our wonderful bubbles and control of all bodies will belong to the body snatchers.

[woo me with science]

6. OMG the CHILDREN!!!!!!

You can snatch my body as long as it keeps them SAFE!!!!!!!!!

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

18. Quick, someone do a study!

If this is true, then there should be clusters of people with short lifespans surrounding each McDonalds. God, the possibilities are endless...

[woo me with science]

22. Yes! A study!

Anything dead surrounding McDonalds, compared to anything dead surrounding...other places. We need a grant!

[seabeyond]

19. the moment your cheeseburger smell hits my nose is the moment you have no rights

that is all i am saying.

on edit: i forgot.:sarcasm:

[woo me with science]

21. When cheeseburgers are outlawed,

only outlaws will have cheeseburgers.

[Marrah_G]

7. what's the sense of living longer if you can't enjoy it.

I'd rather live 60 happy, content and satisfied years then 100 years of restricting myself from lifes pleasures.

[William Bloode]

8. My sentiment to the tee.

I'd rather have a shorter enjoyable life, than a long boring one.

[mcscajun]

13. Absolutely right!

"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, wine glass in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO what a ride!"

I have no desire to live forever, but to Always Live. :)

BTW, if I can't have the smell of frying bacon seduce my nostrils now and then, what's the point? :evilgrin:

[Crabby Appleton]

17. I agree completely. nt

[Cobalt Violet]

Well, it would make me puke my guts out...

Thus leading to a futher reduction in calories. So maybe, maybe not? :shrug:

[EST]

9. Can smelling a cheeseburger shorten your life?

Ummm...probably-if you are actually cooking fish at the time.

[hippiechick]

10. ... as I sit here with a Happy Meal in front of me ...

:spank:

[Individualist]

11. After reading this thread, I'm craving a cheeseburger!

[The Straight Story]

12. You can have the cheeseburger - you just aren't allowed to smell it (nt) :)

[TheCowsCameHome]

14. Before or after it's eaten?

[Swamp Rat]

15. If I catch an uninvited guest smelling my crawfish their life span may be abbreviated.

:D

[randome]

16. Cheese...I mean, geeze,

...everyone lighten up. Not everything scientists report is a philosophical or political statement. It's just something that might be true.

You know that thing about testable hypotheses and all, right? If it's true, it's true. For those who want to use the information, fine. If you don't fine again.

[Hubert Flottz]

20. "Don't let me catch you chewing a cheeseburger in here if...

you didn't bring enough cheeseburgers for the whole class!"

"Man cannot live on buns alone!"

"I would gladly smell dead chicken Tuesday for a Cheeseburger today!"

[uppityperson]

23. Cheeseburgers don't kill people...

people eating cheesburgers kill people