Never Eat Food Past Its Sell-By Date: New Study Finds That Old Ingredients Contributes To Aging, Shorten Lifespan!

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Feb 26, 2017 10:15 PM EST

The findings of a recent study suggest that it's absolutely not safe to consume food that has past the sell-by date, as old ingredients could shorten lifespan. Although so many people are aware of this, the researchers at Harvard University emphasizes that they have solid evidence to prove that old food accelerates aging at a cellular level.

The researchers noted that human youthfulness fades as their cells get damaged, wear and tear to DNA's protein interaction, lack of aerobic respiration, or slowing enzyme function begin to grind everything down. Eventually, the body becomes so weak that we die.

They argue that old food is one of the major factors that contribute to the damage. The researchers, led by Vadim Gladyshev, investigated primarily into the age of meat when it is farmed - for instance, three-year-old deer meat compared to 25-year-old deer meat.

The researchers demonstrated that the old deer has accumulated toxins during its lifetime that its meat is far less nutritious compared to that of a young deer. The researchers suggest that this could also be related to food that has been left for too long after being harvested, thereby allowing the nutrients to deteriorate to minimal levels, according to Daily Mail.

In the study, the researchers examined three different organisms - yeast, mice and fruit flies - and how these organisms react to different aged foods over a period of years.

They found that the organisms that were fed with younger food, that is, fresh produce, consistently suffered less cellular damage. The researchers noted that this shows that these age-related changes that accumulate are truly deleterious and also provides a fundamental insight into the process of aging.

The yeast grew two batches of yeast - one on young yeast cells and the other on old yeast cells. The researchers also fed the fruit flies with either young dead flies or old dead flies. In order to achieve this, the researchers collected 5,000 dead fruit flies that had lived for up to 45 days and also killed another 5,000 young fruit flies.

They then divided the living fruit flies into two groups, feeding one group with the dead old flies and the other with the dead young flies. The researchers fed the mice with either three-year-old deer meat or 25-year-old deer meat, rather than with worms and insects which they are already used to.

The researchers were surprised to find that the fruit flies that were placed on an old diet had a 13 percent shorter lifespan compared to those that were placed on a young diet. They also found in the group of mice, that the damage was most acutely displayed in females than in males but the researchers warn this could lead to sample size, according to NZherald.

The authors found that female mice that were placed on old diet had a 13 percent reduction in lifespan compared to their female counterparts that were placed on younger food. However, the researchers reported that there was barely any difference demonstrated in the males. They believe that findings of the study still cannot be applied to humans yet, as it was only tested on animals.

Also Read: Study Finds That Patients With Early-Stage Breast Cancer May Be Able To Avoid Chemotherapy In The Future 

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