fat thursday

[moominmolly]

From Junkfood Science, via the_xtina, an article on the Minnesota Starvation Study (about the effects of dieting on healthy adults) that I found quite interesting.

EDIT, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD: What I found interesting was: the mental effects of this deprivation on the healthy, normal-weight patients; the idea of patriotic conscientious objectors in a medical study; and the attitudes surrounding the study in general. The whole article was chock full of interesting attitudes toward the world. The general tone of the article and the obvious bias of the author are not my own.

Comments

[dancingwolfgrrl.livejournal.com]

Yeah! I was curious how much it has to do with calorie restriction and how much with the psychological effects of deprivation: I definitely remember being cranky, humorless, and pretty obsessed with food while doing the elimination diet, despite getting plenty of calories. I wonder what would happen if you told people you were restricting their calories but in practice fed them the same number as usual...

[dbang.livejournal.com]

"I wonder what would happen if you told people you were restricting their calories but in practice fed them the same number as usual..."

Now that would be an awesome study!

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

you could probably manage it by changing the *form* of the calories. most people don't have a clue what most food contains in the way of fat, vitamins, sugar, calories, etc. just feed 'em a shake or something similar to bulk up on calories.

[dbang.livejournal.com]

If you just feed them shakes, then you have to wonder if whatever results the study show are from their belief in the reduction of calories, or from the extreme constriction of their diet and the resulting feelings of deprivation.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

It seems like it would be hard to do this without feeding them foods they weren't used to (presumably many of them would be able to tell, with foods they *are* used to, if they're getting a normal amount). And that would be a hell of a confound.

[dilletante.livejournal.com]

it would, however, be easy enough to do the same to the control group.

[dancingwolfgrrl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't know how feasible it would really be :)

[dbang.livejournal.com]

Oh it would be totally easy. Give people a placebo pill and tell them it will automatically limit their appetites to about 70% of previously, so go ahead and eat what they want and it will automatically be less. Tell them to write it all down and then confirm for them they are eating less.

People are amazingly gullible.

[dilletante.livejournal.com]

since telling people they're excercising without any change in their actual activity has been shown to cause measurable weight loss, i wouldn't be surprised if it did interesting things.

[dancingwolfgrrl.livejournal.com]

Ha! I love it.

[harimad.livejournal.com]

Specifically (if we're thinking of the same study), convincing people doing laborious work (hotel maids) that what they did was exercise, had an effect. The hotel maid study did not try to convince people who weren't exercising, that they were.

[dilletante.livejournal.com]

true. i think it would be hard to find non-bedridden subjects who couldn't under some description be said to be excercising. but the study deliberately chose a population whose jobs were reasonably active.