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On the hypotheses "Availability of refined sugars reduces life span.", using mice.
Any suggestions on how to make this more scientifically valuable?
Get some female mice, split them up into two cages, feed one an unlimited amount of typical healthy mouse food, and feed the other the same, plus unlimited food with extra sugar. And see how long they all take to die. Typical life span is about 1 year.
Josh is trying to convince me I need to record quantity of sugar consumed.
How many mice? Josh also recommends Hsd:ICR mice. I'm tempted to just use much cheaper pet shop mice.
Update: I think providing water with sugar in it would work better than food with sugar.
Any suggestions on how to make this more scientifically valuable?
Get some female mice, split them up into two cages, feed one an unlimited amount of typical healthy mouse food, and feed the other the same, plus unlimited food with extra sugar. And see how long they all take to die. Typical life span is about 1 year.
Josh is trying to convince me I need to record quantity of sugar consumed.
How many mice? Josh also recommends Hsd:ICR mice. I'm tempted to just use much cheaper pet shop mice.
Update: I think providing water with sugar in it would work better than food with sugar.
if all you eat is sugar, you'll soon die. just not enough of the "trace" stuff.
if you manage to get SOME trace stuff into the diet, you'll live longer... not necessarily at peak performance though.
if you manage to get enough protein, fat, gogogo now carbs, and various other goodies, lots longer.
now, of course, there's a bounds for either end ;) which end do you want to be on?
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I think it's pretty well established that we (Americans) get *way* more calories than we need, that way too many of those calories are refined sugar, and and we'd all be healthier if we ate more vegetables, complex carbs, and fruits. How much time and money are you willing to put into this test? What's the standard deviation on the lifespan of mice anyway? How much shorter than "normal" is statistically significant? How does *your* diet compare to the control mouse diet? Mouse chow (Yes, Purina makes it) is pretty damn good food for mice, probably a lot better for them than what you (or I) eat is for us. How does *quantity* of food fit in compared to *quality*? It's already been shown that simply eating 10%-20% fewer calories from any source makes any animal healthier, live longer, live better, live happier, etc. (yes, it's been tested on frogs and mice and monkeys and cats and lizards)
Doing the kind of testing you're talking about is incredibly time consuming and difficult to get decent, useful results.
Your time is way better spent learning to (and getting in the habit of) making and cook better meals, starting with better raw materials (e.g. fresh fruits and vegies from the market or your own garden instead of cans), getting regular exercise, and the like.
Just stop eating sugar. Really. Or reduce it significantly. If it's making you feel like shit, you'll know in a couple weeks.
How does this affect what you *really* want to know, which basically comes down to "If
My goals were more along the lines of a surgeon general's warning on all products containing refined carbs.
There's always the option of getting a Ph.D. in biology. . .
Confounding factors