Abstract
Diet restriction (DR) enhances animals' health maintenance, but refeeding reverses its beneficial effects. However, to what degree refeeding reverses the beneficial effects of DR remains controversial. Here, I develop a theoretical model for reconciling the results of refeeding studies and understanding the dynamic and reversible mechanism underlying the effects of diet on health from the energetic viewpoint. By illustrating the negative correlation between health maintenance and the energetic cost of growth in animals under different diet regimes, the model explains why, in some cases, refed animals have better health and live longer than freely fed controls. More importantly, the model reveals that, in some species, the energetic cost of synthesizing biomass increases during growth, so the expensive compensatory growth induced by refeeding later in life offsets the benefits of the inexpensive retarded growth induced by diet restriction early in life. Thus, in these species, refeeding drives animals to allocate more energy to growth and less to maintenance and therefore leads to poor health status and shorter life span compared to freely fed controls.
Recommended Citation
C. Hou, "Increasing Energetic Cost of Biosynthesis During Growth Makes Refeeding Deleterious," American Naturalist, vol. 184, no. 2, pp. 233 - 247, University of Chicago Press, Aug 2014.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1086/676856
Department(s)
Biological Sciences
Keywords and Phrases
Compensatory Growth; Diet Restriction; Metabolism; Oxidative Damage; Refeeding
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
0003-0147;1537-5323
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Final Version
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2014 University of Chicago Press, All rights reserved.
Publication Date
01 Aug 2014
PubMed ID
25058283
