New York, Feb 29 (TIWN) If you want to live longer, reduce levels of inflammation throughout your body and delay the onset of age-related diseases -- eat less food, say researchers.

According to a study, published in the journal Cell, researchers from US and China provided the most detailed report of the cellular effects of a calorie-restricted diet in rats.

While the benefits of caloric restriction have long been known, the new results show how this restriction can protect against aging in cellular pathways.

"We already knew that calorie restriction increases life span, but now we've shown all the changes that occur at a single-cell level to cause that," said study senior author Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte from the Salk Institute in the US

"This gives us targets that we may eventually be able to act on with drugs to treat aging in humans," Belmonte added.

For the findings, the research team compared rats who ate 30 per cent fewer calories with rats on normal diets.

The diet of animals in the age group of 18-27 months was controlled. (In humans, this would be roughly equivalent to someone following a calorie-restricted diet from the age of 50 to 70.)

The research team isolated and analysed a total of 168,703 cells from 40 cell types in the 56 rats from starting as well as during the conclusion of the diet. The cells came from fat tissues, liver, kidney, aorta, skin, bone marrow, brain and muscle.

In each isolated cell, the researchers used single-cell genetic-sequencing technology to measure the activity levels of genes.