Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, created a buzz in the nutrition world when he went on a 10-week diet that consisted of twinkies, canned vegetables, and sugary convenience foods – and lost 27 pounds.
Not only did Haub lose weight, but other markers of his health also improved, including a 20% drop in his LDL (“bad”) cholesterol, a 20% increase in his HDL (“good”) cholesterol, 39% reduction of triglycerides, a BMI that went from 28.8 (overweight) to 24.9 (normal), and a body fat percentage that dropped from 33.4 to 24.9 percent body fat.
Before Haub started his diet he weighed just over 200 pounds and consumed approximately 2,600 calories a day. He also followed the golden rule of weight loss, which was to consume less calories than he burned per day. Yet during his junk food diet, he ate only 1,800 calories of food. His diet consisted of food like Doritos, Little Debbie cakes, sugary cereal, Diet Mountain Dew, and whole milk. Though he did consume minimal vegetables (and usually canned), a multivitamin, and a protein shake, his diet consisted of foods you could find at a convenience store. Haub noted in the article that people who live in food deserts (areas, like urban cities, where fresh food and decent grocery stores are unavailable) eat this type of food everyday. What he and the rest of us learned is maybe it’s not about what you eat, but, more or less, how much you eat. Below is a sample day for Prof. Haub:
Double Espresso: 6 calories; 0 grams of fat
Hostess Twinkies Golden Sponge Cake: 150 calories; 5 grams of fat
Centrum Advanced Formula From A To Zinc: 0 calories; 0 grams of fat
Little Debbie Star Crunch: 150 calories; 6 grams of fat
Hostess Twinkies Golden Sponge Cake: 150 calories; 5 grams of fat
Diet Mountain Dew: 0 calories; 0 grams of fat
Doritos Cool Ranch: 75 calories; 4 grams of fat
Kellogg's Corn Pops: 220 calories; 0 grams of fat
whole milk: 150 calories; 8 grams of fat
baby carrots: 18 calories; 0 grams of fat
Duncan Hines Family Style Brownie Chewy Fudge: 270 calories; 14 grams of fat
Little Debbie Zebra Cake: 160 calories; 8 grams of fat
Muscle Milk Protein Shake: 240 calories; 9 grams of fat
Totals: 1,589 calories and 59 grams of fat
Dawn Jackson Blatner, a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association and a Registered Dietitian in Chicago, contributes his weight loss success and health improvements to simple calorie reduction. She's not surprised that health markers like cholestrol, body fat, and triglyceride levels improved, since being overweight is the central problem that leads to complications like high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol. "When you lose weight, regardless of how you're doing it -- even if it's with packaged foods, generally you will see these markers improve when weight loss has improved," Blatner said.
This, of course, is totally mind-blowing. What happened to fresh fruits and vegetables? Whole grains? Lean meat? Skim milk and non-fat yogurt? Almonds? Omega-3 supplements? I thought these foods were supposed to help us, and the “bad” foods (like cakes, cookies, diet soda, and potato chips) were supposed to hurt us. In the years of taking nutrition and health classes, nowhere has any professor mentioned to me that a diet consisting of junk food will make me healthier. Never in a million years would a dietitian counsel a patient to adopt Haub’s diet. So what’s the deal?
Prof. Haub’s study is frustrating because many of us adopt a healthy lifestyle but hardly see quick results like these. In just 10 weeks he lost 13.5 percent of his body weight and lowered his cholesterol faster than you would eating oatmeal every morning. He was trying to prove a point regarding calories and actual nutritional value of food. Even he is surprised and admits that the success of his diet confuses him, and that he doesn’t know what to believe. Nowhere in the article were blood glucose or hbA1c levels reported, nor do we know how this diet would affect someone long-term.
Haub determined something we already know but hardly follow in thie overweight country: a reduction of calories leads to a reduction in weight. What surprised me is how drastically his LDL cholesterol and triglycerides dropped, even from eating horrible food. But Ms. Blatner somewhat cleared up that misconception, and perhaps body weight does play more of a role for chronic health problems than the nutritional value (or lack thereof) of the food we eat. Maybe high-fat, high-sugar, and high-salt foods aren’t as much a culprit as high body weight is, though the foods Haub ate are usually what contribute to high body weight – when eaten in excess.
Haub’s current success shouldn’t reflect the long-term damage he is doing to his body, since this type of diet will eventually be detrimental to heart health, glucose tolerance, and cancer prevention. But what it can help all of us to realize is how important portion control is for total body weight. And that’s something I’m definitely a fan of.
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