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Restricting the intake of calories has been practiced as a method for increasing both the length and quality of life for over 500years. Experimental work confirming the success of this approach in animals has accumulated over the last 100years. Lifelong caloric restriction (CR) may extend life by up to 50% in rodents, with progressively less impact the later in life it is started. This effect is matched by profound impacts on age related diseases including reduced risk of cancer, neurodegenerative disorders, autoimmune disease, cardiovascular disease and type II diabetes mellitus. The disposable soma theory of ageing suggests that CR evolved as a somatic protection response to enable animals to survive periods of food shortage. The shutdown of reproductive function during CR is consistent with this suggestion, but other features of the phenomenon are less consistent with this theory, and some have suggested that in …