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Fat Grandmothers

I had none. I'm so fortunate that I had both my paternal and maternal grandparents in my life, and my great-grandparents lived just a few doors away when I was very young. My grandmothers weren't fat, or even plump or curvy. If your grandmother is a member of my generation, you probably can't say that.

Today I was reading "Aging, adiposity, and calorie restriction," by Luigi Fontana and Samuel Klein in the March 7, 2007 JAMA. It's a very cautious and conservative review of the literature from 1966 through December 2006 in PubMed (the largest and most famous medical literature database) which concludes from all the studies done on calorie restriction in the last 40 years that calorie restriction in adult men and women causes beneficial metabolic, hormonal, and functional changes, but (and here's the cautious part) the precise amount of calorie intake or body fat mass associated with optimal health and longevity in humans is not known. And after laying out all this fabulous research (139 citations), the authors take a buy-out and decide that because calorie restriction is difficult to maintain long-term, we might have to turn to a pharmacological agent for a solution. Cha-ching. There's no money in eating less, moving more.

That's what got me thinking about my grandmothers, both of whom lived to their late 80s. One was born in 1876 and the other in 1895, young enough to be the other's daughter (my great grandmother was born in 1873), a time when life expectancy at birth was about 45. Their generations benefited from better hygiene, but I doubt that either ever had a vaccination. It's possible that very late in life they might have had an antibiotic. I don't know much about their early lives, but given the times, I'm sure they were both breast fed by non-smoking mothers. They didn't give birth in hospitals. They both lived their childhood and early married life on farms a few miles from each other, but didn't work in the fields. Housework, however, was much more physical in those days. I use Grandma Mary's pressing irons as book-ends--they were heated on the cookstove and weigh 10-15 lbs. Water was pumped outside and carried in to be heated either in the stove or on it. Grandma Mary was wealthier than Grandma Bessie and did have a German woman as household help, but they would've worked side by side. And both gardened (potatoes, carrots, cabbage, tomatoes, beans, turnips) and raised chickens for meat and eggs. Root crops could be stored, and beans and tomatoes were canned for winter, but table fare was pretty bland and boring. Both women baked their own bread. Beef was not on the table in either household. Grandma Mary rarely served meat, except chicken occasionally, and Grandma Bessie would have only had fatty pork, sausage, or a tough old chicken, too old to lay. Cows were for milk (cash crop) and butter (for cooking), and when you think about it, they were much more difficult to butcher for a single family than a pig or chicken. There wasn't even much in the way of fruit, maybe a few apples, grapes for juice or berries.

According to the authors, the first calorie restriction study was done in 1935 when it was discovered that limiting calories in lab rats increased their life span by 30-60%. Food shortages during WWII in some European countries were associated with a sharp decrease in coronary heart disease, and although this article didn't mention it, I've seen reports like that on breast cancer. Again, the authors use cautious language, but say "population studies suggest that lifestyle factors, such as sedentary lifestyle, dietary intake, and adiposity, are responsible for up to 70% of chronic disease and are a major contributor to reduced longevity. . . data suggest that a BMI at the low end of normal (18.5-24.9) is associated with optimal metabolic and cardiovascular health."