The Twinkie Diet: A Paleo Dieter Perspective

So far two people have emailed me about the “Twinkie diet” self-experiment followed by Mark Haub, Ph.D., a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, and reported by CNN.com.  Stephan made an excellent post on it here, which I recommend that you read.  Raj at Harder.Better.Faster.Stronger also made a useful contribution. 

My own views overlap those of Stephan and Raj. 

First, Dr. Haub limited himself to less than 1800 calories per day, while his caloric expenditure at his pre diet weight would be at least 2600 calories (see calculation below).  He described his experiment as "I'm eating to the point of need and pushing the plate or wrapper away.”    The question is, how was he determining “the point of need”?  Answer:  By calculating calories.  

Everyone agrees that anyone can lose weight by deliberately restricting caloric or food intake for a  period of time.  But who wants to meticulously count calories day after day after day?  This is not a spontaneous and therefore for most people not a sustainable way to maintain an appropriate food intake. 

As Stephan notes, the body has its own intelligence which regulates food intake without the interference of the conscious mind.  If you choose the Twinkie diet, you can lose weight as long as you consciously monitor your caloric intake and deliberately override your hunger drive.  However, if you want your body to regulate itself, you will want to eat in a way that allows you to feel satisfied and frees you of having to consciously monitor your food intake.  That would mean eating the foods to which your body is naturally adapted, and avoiding those to which it is not adapted. 

According to Dr. Haub’s Facebook page on his experiment, he lost 26.6 pounds over 10 weeks, going from 200.8 pounds and  33.4% body fat to 174.2 pounds and 24.9% body fat.  So, at the beginning he had  67 lbs fat mass and 134 lbs lean mass, and after ten weeks he had 43 lbs fat mass and 131 lbs lean mass.  Thus, he lost 24 pounds of fat, which requires the metabolism of 84000 calories over 70 days.  This means he had a caloric deficit of about 1200 calories per day.  Haub's sample diet record shows a food energy intake of about 1600 calories per day (more on this below). 

When Ancel Keys conducted the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, he “only” restricted the participants to 1800 calories daily, so 1400 calories daily for a person who requires more than 2600 is definitely starvation rations. 

As I discussed in a previous post, the Minnesota Study established that this level of caloric restriction has numerous adverse effects over time.  As reported in the Journal of Nutrition, one of the participants in this experiment, Harold Blickenstaff, "recalled the frustration of constantly thinking about food:

    I don’t know many other things in my life that I looked forward to being over with any more than this experiment. And it wasn’t so much ... because of the physical discomfort, but because it made food the most important thing in one’s life ... food became the one central and only thing really in one’s life. And life is pretty dull if that’s the only thing. I mean, if you went to a movie, you weren’t particularly interested in the love scenes, but you noticed every time they ate and what they ate. found men depression, and other effects making for many a long life not worth living.

Severe energy restriction had numerous adverse effects in the Minnesota Study:

    "They experienced dizziness, extreme tiredness, muscle soreness, hair loss, reduced coordination, and ringing in their ears. Several were forced to withdraw from their university classes because they simply didn’t have the energy or motivation to attend and concentrate."

Most people will feel something like this eating a 1400 calorie Twinkie diet.

Another interesting perspective will be gained by analyzing his sample diet. There he states an intake of 1589 calories, 222g carbohydrate, 59g fat, and 44g protein.  Since he had a 1200 calorie daily deficit calculated above, his total caloric expenditure (food intake plus fat burned from body) was about 2789 and he was severely restricting calories by 45% (i.e. consuming only 55% of required calories).  Very few people can sustain this level of caloric restriction long enough to achieve desired body composition or health outcomes.

Of that 2789 total calories burned each day, 1200 calories came from body fat and 59x9=531 calories came from food fat, so he metabolized a total of 1731 calories from fat every day, which means on that day 1731÷2789=0.62 or 62% of his calories came from fat, while only 32% of his calories came from carbohydrate and a mere 6% from protein.  In other words, metabolically he is actually on a high-fat, carbohydrate-restricted, low-protein diet.  

Some people seem surprised that he had decreases in total lipoproteins (so-called “cholesterol”) , LDL, triglycerides, and glucose, and an increase in HDL, while on this diet.  But if you maintain this level of caloric restriction, your blood fat (triglyceride) and sugar levels will be low because your starving cells are sucking every gram of usable fat and sugar from the blood.  Try eating the Twinkie diet at maintenance calories and I think you will see a very different result on blood lipids and blood sugar.

 Moreover, reductions of total “cholesterol,” LDL, triglycerides, and glucose are a well-documented effect of carbohydrate restriction or diets in which most of the calories come from fat (which is the case for most calorie-restricted diets, as Richard Nikoley has discussed in his post All Diets are High Fat Diets).

But as Raj pointed out, the changes in blood lipids reported by Haub are not particularly impressive. His LDL dropped from 153 to 123, mediocre considering he lost 27 lbs.  His HDL rose from 37 to 46, and his triglycerides dropped from 120 to 75.  His HDL still does not exceed the level of 60 considered to provide protection against heart disease.  He still has a triglyceride to HDL ratio of 1.6, slightly above the 1.5 that marks resistance to heart disease  (Triglyceride-to-HDL ratio effectively predicts mortality and CV events).

In comparison, my last blood profile showed my total lipoproteins at 231 mg/dL, my HDL at 85, and my triglycerides at 47.  Using the Friedewald equation they calculated the LDL at 138, but since I have very low triglycerides, using the Iranian formula calculator  I calculate my LDL equals 104, compared to Haub's 123, but mine was measured on a calorie-adequate diet, while his was on a deficit diet.  Haub has a trig:HDL ratio of 1.6, whereas mine is 0.55, again, mine measured while I maintained adequate caloric intake and his while he was losing body fat.  I venture that my primal diet results are much better than Haub's obtained with his Twinkie diet.

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