Twinkie Diet?

Being the calorie-counting, organic-eating health nut that I am, imagine my anger and frustration when I heard about the Twinkie Diet.

As an experiment, Mark Haub, a human nutrition professor at Kansas State University, lived off of Twinkies, Doritos, Little Debbie Zebra Cakes, and Mountain Dew for 10 weeks and actually lost a whopping 28 pounds without changing his exercise habits. What’s even more shocking is that his bad cholesterol went down and good cholesterol went up.

Take that Weight Watchers!

But what about all the high fructose corn syrup, Trans fats, and chemicals chemicals chemicals? Were the dozens of health and nutrition books I’ve read complete BS?

Two takeaways from Haub’s experiment:

Firstly, good or bad, a calorie is a calorie. Haubs did cut down his daily calorie intake by about a half during the 10-week period, even though they all came from junk foods. A common misconception is that all healthy foods are “skinny”. But consider this example: 2/3 cup of Nature’s Path Hemp Plus Granola has 260 calories; 2/3 cup of Kellogg’s Fruit Loops only has 118 calories.

Secondly, skinny ≠ healthy. Haub may have lost weight, but it would very hard to convince any health aware person that the Twinkie diet is sustainable. And it goes back to the lesson that we learned from failed diets like Atkins, that a balanced diet is still key.