The Twinkie Diet Experiment
Excerpt:
For 10 weeks, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate one of these sugary cakelets every three hours, instead of meals. To add variety in his steady stream of Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, Haub munched on Doritos chips, sugary cereals and Oreos, too.
His premise: That in weight loss, pure calorie counting is what matters most -- not the nutritional value of the food.
The premise held up: On his "convenience store diet," he shed 27 pounds in two months.
For a class project, Haub limited himself to less than 1,800 calories a day. A man of Haub's pre-dieting size usually consumes about 2,600 calories daily. So he followed a basic principle of weight loss: He consumed significantly fewer calories than he burned.
His body mass index went from 28.8, considered overweight, to 24.9, which is normal. He now weighs 174 pounds.
But you might expect other indicators of health would have suffered. Not so.
Haub's "bad" cholesterol, or LDL, dropped 20 percent and his "good" cholesterol, or HDL, increased by 20 percent. He reduced the level of triglycerides, which are a form of fat, by 39 percent.
"That's where the head scratching comes," Haub said. "What does that mean? Does that mean I'm healthier? Or does it mean how we define health from a biology standpoint, that we're missing something?"
Comment: Interesting - "pure calorie counting is what matters most". I'm surprised his cholesterol counts improved!
Ugh--though there is other evidence that the link between dietary cholesterol and blood (serum) cholesterol is not terribly strong. Studies find that egg intake is not well correlated, and also that those on the Atkins diet have better cholesterol as a result.
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to see whether these serum cholesterol improvements correlate well with weight loss. I would have to assume that blood flowing through my ample fatty tissues might have something to do with my personal cholesterol level, and perhaps reducing the ampleness of that tissue could be helpful.
Weight loss is easy math - consume less calories than you use. The problem is when you are eating less, it is even more important to eat wisely - to ensure you get nutrients. This man could continue his diet and would most likely see himself getting sick more often (not enough vitamins), have problems with bone density later in life (not enough calcium), and could even face cancer due to a lack of fiber and antioxidants. I would NOT recommend this method to loose extra pounds.
ReplyDeleteBike Bubba...you're exactly right. Cholesterol levels drop with weight loss. It has been proven time and time again in almost every weight loss study. The question is how much his cholesterol would have dropped on a more reasonable diet.
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