Examining a zero-calorie food, Calorie Restriction Society chairwoman Meredith Averill laughs with co-conference organizer David Stern at the Hotel Arizona on Friday at a conference promoting healthier living through eating fewer calories.

A.E. ARAIZA / Arizona Daily Star

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Dr. Alex Jenkins stands a little more than 6-foot-1, weighs 145 pounds and doesn't need to break for lunch because he typically doesn't eat it.

And it's all because he hopes to live a long and healthy life.

"You can get to 100 without having a heart attack or stroke," said Jenkins, a 32-year-old Tucson psychiatrist who usually eats two meals per day. "The various lab tests they've done on calorie restriction are just amazing. I think people are living longer and healthier lives through the innovations of medicine and this is more powerful intervention than medicine."

Jenkins is on what's known as a calorie restriction diet and usually eats just less than 2,000 calories per day, roughly 25 to 30 percent less than what's recommended for a man of his age and activity level. He is also one of 80 people attending the Calorie Restriction Society's fourth conference in Downtown Tucson this week. The conference began Wednesday and concludes today. About 2,000 people from around the world are on the society's e-mail list.

The society's philosophy — that slashing calories will lead to a longer, healthier life — has been supported by numerous scientific studies on rats and mice, which consistently show an extended lifespan when put on a diet of 30 to 50 percent fewer calories. A study sponsored by the National Institute on Aging published this week in The Journal of the American Medical Association also showed that reducing calories in 48 people for six months led to decreases in both body temperature and insulin levels, typically considered signs of longevity.

Yet, in a nation where more than half the population is overweight and about 20 percent is obese, CRs, as they call themselves, are countercultural, to say the least. Many say following a CR regimen requires vigilance, discipline and absolute faith in the CR philosophy.

But what members are talking about this week is mainstreaming that philosophy to help educate Americans about healthy eating and preventing the illnesses that often come with old age, such as cancer, hypertension and heart disease.

CRs say they also are focusing more on the "here and now" rather than the long-term future, trying to shake an image they're living lives of hunger, suffering, low libido and low energy in the hopes of living to 120. Most will say they rarely get sick or suffer allergies or asthma. Several conference attendees noted how few coughs and sneezes were heard.

"A lot of the misery and decrepitude of old age is disease, conditions like Type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease," CR Society president Brian M. Delaney said. "A lot of people not on this diet at 58 absolutely would start getting Type II diabetes. We want to start promoting more research into how to implement the diet, or if an alternative can be created."

Delaney co-wrote a book called The Longevity Diet, published in 2005, and says calorie restriction is the only proven way to slow the aging process and maintain peak vitality. His co-author is Lisa Walford, the daughter of Dr. Roy Walford, a UCLA medical professor who conducted low-calorie diet research on mice and tried out the low-calorie diet on the Biosphere 2 crew in the early 1990s. Walford, who died in 2004 of Lou Gehrig's disease, was among eight people sealed for two years in the closed ecological system north of Tucson.

While many conference attendees this week appear slim, even gaunt, others do not. Also, attendees note that since most Americans are overweight, people who are on the low side of normal for weight and Body Mass Index — BMI — can look very skinny in contrast.

"One of the criticisms we get is people think that it's extreme. My BMI is in the middle to normal range and no one is anorexic, which is a BMI below 15," said David Stern, a 58-year-old CR and software developer from Chicago. "It's a continuum — you do what you need to do to maintain your quality of life."

Stern, who once weighed 200 pounds, has been on a CR diet for seven years and tries to stick to 1,400 calories per day. He is 5-foot-8 inches tall and weighs 135 pounds. His BMI — nearly every CR you talk to knows theirs — is 20.5, well within the normal range. And Stern, who like most CRs sticks mostly to salads, fruit and vegetables, says he's never had more energy or felt more alert. Stern sees himself living for a long time but like many CRs stops short of saying exactly how long.

"Using the word immortality turns some people off — it means forever and there is no such thing," he said.

The CR Society's dietary recommendations include avoiding simple sugars and processed foods, which is good advice, said Dr. Randy Horwitz, medical director of the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona. Horwitz also said that the scientific research on calorie restriction in animals is impressive.

"I wouldn't want anyone to get malnourished, but the basic scientific principles are there," said Horwitz, who is not affiliated with the CR Society. "We have an obesity problem and I think choosing foods carefully is important. What they don't say is exactly how many calories people should have. Going too low is dangerous without medical supervision."

Horwitz added that looking at just one component, such as calorie restriction, in the quest for health is not what integrative medicine recommends.

The CR Society is a splinter organization of an Internet-based group of people interested in life extension that began in the early '90s. The CRs held their first conference in 2001. This week's conference had sessions in meditative eating and bone-building yoga, but was predominantly lectures by scientists talking about subjects such as oxidative stress, meat-adaptive genes, longevity therapeutics and how evolutionary thinking affects ideas about aging interventions. The comparison groups they often talk about are raw foodists, "exercisers" and average Americans.

In other words, the diet is less about fitting into size two jeans than it is about health and longevity.

"CR appeals to analytical, brainy scientists; a lot own their own businesses, do independent research," said Louise Gold, a 50-year-old accountant from Los Angeles who follows CR. "We tend to be independent types. People who have big families, participate in team sports, food for them is in a shared kind of atmosphere."

A runner, Gold said she differs from some of the other CR members who believe intense exercise contributes to aging. She runs marathons, does Bikram yoga, and eats about 1,900 calories a day. At 5-foot-6, she weighs 118 pounds. She also fasts every Monday.

"I want to keep an appreciation and respect for food. It's mind-strengthening. Every Monday morning, I start feeling hunger but who is boss, my brain or my stomach?" Gold is committed to living a long life, and when she eventually dies she's got a backup plan — she signed up for cryonics, the technology of freezing a body after death in hopes medical science can revive the person in the future, when the effects of aging may also be reversed.

Whether it's cryonics or another form of technology, many CRs are optimistic scientific research will result in significant lifespan changes.

"Aging is one of the major unsolved mysteries," Stern said.

On StarNet Find webcasts and articles on diet and weight loss at go.azstarnet.com/ dieting