Monday, November 8, 2010

The Twinkie Diet

So this nutrition professor eats nothing but Twinkies, Little Debbies snack cakes, Doritos, and Oreos for ten weeks. He wanted to demonstrate that dieting is all about cutting calories. He cut his pre-diet daily intake from 2600 calories to 1800 calories of pure, sugary junk.

And he lost 27 pounds.

That's not the interesting part. This is:
...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?'
I'm going with "missing something." This also reminds me of a great F. A. Hayek quote: "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."

Update: Video coverage of the story:

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2 comments:

Dr. Rozeboom said...

As a chiropractor, I have studied human nutrition for 20 years and use it every day in my practice.

The Twinkie diet will deplete the body of trace minerals and B vitamins, at the very least. It will also create a protein deficiency.

To use cholesterol and triglycerides as a measure of health is absurd. A person is much healthier with a total cholesterol around 300. Cholesterol is a vital nutrient for the brain and a major building block for all hormones.

Low cholesterol makes a stupid person. Some people want stupid persons in the masses.

Dr. Rozeboom

dsm said...

@Dr. Rozeboom,

You make several good points. That said, the linked article notes that Haub took a multi-vitamin and ate some vegetables.

"Low cholesterol makes a stupid person." Yes. Fat is an important part of our diets. I think the average person assumes that eating fat makes you fat (you are what you eat!), but the reality is quite different.

Haub's greatest contribution is to explode some trite assumptions about our diets. He's not actually advocating such a diet. And it's refreshing to see an academic question his assumptions and the status quo.