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

[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.