Mark Haub, a nutritionist, lost 27 pounds from eating sugary processed cakes like the kind found dangling at the register in quickie marts. The diet dubbed The Twinkie Diet was a 10 week diet where Haub’s meals consisted of sugary cakes every 3 hours, with a few vegetables at night, a multi-vitamin, lacing Doritos and Oreos in between meals.
Haub’s caloric intake went from 2,600 to 1,800 which is the correct amount of calories for energy balance approach to weight loss. At this calorie consumption one would burn more than one consumes so are all calories created equal? Haub’s diet suggests that caloric reduction matters when it comes to weight loss but what about health concerns.
The research for the Twinkie Diet has no conclusive evidence about the long-term effects of eating ‘junk food’ and Haub doesn’t recommend this diet. Before the diet Haub ate ‘healthy’ but he claimed he was eating too much. For him there was a disconnect between eating healthy and being healthy. However, research about thermodynamic effect (energy storage and conversion) of whole food (WF) versus processed food (PF) shows that average post meal energy expenditure was 50% less with PF than with WF.
In layman’s terms, you don’t easily convert food into energy. Even though the body burns the same amount of calories, PF calories are processed less quickly and efficiently. This means less energy overall and is why diets high in PF are associated with obesity. This explains that sluggish feeling I have after eating junk food.
Just like Haub, I have no conclusion for his study. I am not a nutritionist but from a holistic approach your body is your temple. I avoid PF because I don’t know what some of those multisyllabic poly-blah-blahs are. The same argument could be made for WF, I have no idea the pesticides or soil its grown in. Realistically, we are all human and creatures of convenience. PF is cheap and people who can’t afford the time or just plain can’t afford WF’s are going to purchase PF. Food is our energy source and also a multi-billion dollar business, in the end I wonder if government should be responsible for nutrition education initiatives like Let’s Move or food manufacturers should be footing that bill. Post your thoughts because I am curious.
I think Haub’s study is bullshit. Anyone eating less calories than they burn can lose weight. That isn’t news and this only helps to convince people to keep eating crap. The real study should be the overall health AND weight loss of someone eating the same amount of calories eating real, whole foods versus the Twinkies (if they insist on using Twinkies or other crap at all).
True, the data seems to lack a placebo. He should redo it with whole foods at the same calorie rate. Sure he would be hungrier but that is because he can process and burn the food. We should hire a nutritionist and have her create the diet we need and see what happens – the only thing is we workout too much. If we lost 27 pounds we would (especially you) and be way underweight.