Man loses weight on diet of Twinkies, Doritos, Oreos and Hostess Cakes

In order to explore the significance of caloric-reduction as opposed to nutrition in weight-loss, Kansas State University human nutrition professor Mark Haub undertook an interesting challenge – he ate nothing but sugary snacks and Doritos for two months. He reported some interesting findings.

For the two-month duration of his study Daub ate little more than snack food. His diet consisted of Twinkies, Doritos Chips, Oreos and Hostess Cakes – each snack was consumed three-hourly, he did not eat any regular meals. In addition to all of the sweets and snacks he also drank protein shakes, ate some vegetables and took a multi-vitamin pill each day. Despite the amount of junk in his diet, Daub consumed no more than 1,800 calories per day, 800 less than would be recommended for a man of his size.

In that time, Daub’s body mass index decreased from 28.8 to 24.9 and he lost a total of 27 pounds. But the weight reduction wasn’t the only benefit of Daub’s extreme diet. His blood tests revealed some truly interesting findings: at the conclusion of his experiment, Daub’s LDL cholestrol (the bad kind) level had dropped by 20%, while his HDL cholestrol (the good kind) had increased by 20% and his triglyceride level had dropped an astonishing 39%.

The fact that his blood-work seemed to reveal that he was healthier left Daub intrigued:

That’s where the head scratching comes. 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?

He continued:

These foods are consumed by lots of people. It may be an issue of portion size and moderation rather than total removal. I just think it’s unrealistic to expect people to totally drop these foods for vegetables and fruits. It may be healthy, but not realistic.

[CNN]