The journal Bioessays regularly publishes video abstracts of their articles. Especially outstanding is this example where Margo I. Adler, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, describes a new evolutionary hypothesis for the effect of dietary restriction on lifespan.

Dietary restriction adaptively up-regulates cellular recycling mechanisms like autophagy, a self-degradative process of the cell, and apoptosis, the process of programmed cell death. This increases resource efficiency and promotes immediate reproduction. Old-age pathologies, such as cancer, are reduced as a side effect and this extends the lifespan in laboratory environments.

Read the Article:

• Why do the well-fed appear to die young?
  A new evolutionary hypothesis for the effect of dietary restriction on lifespan,
  Margo I. Adler, Russell Bonduriansky,
  BioEssays 2014.
  DOI: 10.1002/bies.201300165