{"id":4167,"date":"2010-11-14T22:36:36","date_gmt":"2010-11-14T20:36:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.ultimatefatburner.com\/?p=4167"},"modified":"2015-02-19T19:13:24","modified_gmt":"2015-02-20T00:13:24","slug":"the-twinkie-diet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/the-twinkie-diet\/","title":{"rendered":"The Twinkie Diet"},"content":{"rendered":"

I suppose I’m probably the last health\/fitness blogger to write about KSU Professor Mark Haub’s little weight loss experiment<\/a>. The coverage has been practically nonstop, after all.<\/p>\n

So why didn’t I\u00a0discuss it last week, when it first hit the news?<\/p>\n

To be honest, my initial thoughts were “so what?” From where I sit, there’s nothing the least bit radical about what he did. People have been losing weight on diets filled with highly refined\/high sugar foods for a long time. Take the “Special K Challenge,”<\/a> for example – how\u00a0eating fortified, sugary bars and cereal\u00a0differs from eating Twinkies + a protein shake\u00a0+ a multi is anyone’s guess. And Slim Fast… helloo?\u00a0\u00a0Sugar accounts for a\u00a0substantial number\u00a0of the cals in those shakes and bars.<\/p>\n

So in principle,\u00a0Haub’s diet\u00a0was\u00a0no different from any number of other sub-optimal, low-cal\u00a0plans\u00a0that work perfectly well, provided that simple weight loss (vs. physique optimization or improved long-term health) is the goal. Even with\u00a0better-balanced diets, “calories in\/calories out” still holds.<\/p>\n

Even worse,\u00a0it\u00a0wasn’t even good science.\u00a0Props to Dr. Haub for being more methodical than most dieters, but that’s about as much credit as I can give him. For my money, his story is a lot less interesting than Dr. Peggy Polaneczky’s<\/a>… at least she was part of a controlled\u00a0study that –\u00a0from where I sit\u00a0–\u00a0appears far more newsworthy than Dr. Haub’s little, “n=1” experiment.<\/p>\n

So\u00a0tell me again… why\u00a0is\u00a0Haub’s story headline\u00a0news???<\/p>\n

Ok… on one level, it’s kinda catchy, ’cause Haub is a nutrition<\/em> professor. Get it?\u00a0That a\u00a0nutrition professor lost weight\u00a0eating junk food – of all things –\u00a0has a\u00a0contrarian feel to it… and the media loves contrarian stories.<\/p>\n

But I can’t help but make a connection between the\u00a0extraordinary popularity of Haub’s story and where I first\u00a0saw it.<\/p>\n

And no, it wasn’t on CNN, either.<\/p>\n

Y’see, I’m a member of the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT)<\/a> – THE premier professional society for members of the food industry. Haub’s story – which was posted on IFT’s “ePerspective” blog<\/a>\u00a0–\u00a0first appeared in my inbox on October 27… well before it hit the mainstream news cycle. And I can’t help but notice that –\u00a0while it may be a non-story from a weight loss or scientific perspective – it’s a GREAT story from an industry POV.<\/p>\n

So seriously, is it just a coincidence that – at a time when the food\u00a0industry is facing\u00a0widespread\u00a0criticism over its role in promoting obesity – a catchy, IFT-sourced\u00a0“you can eat a\u00a0junk food diet\u00a0and still\u00a0lose weight” story\u00a0is all over the news?<\/p>\n

Ok, maybe it is… but let’s just say I’m skeptical. It fits just a little too neatly into the industry agenda, IMHO.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I suppose I’m probably the last health\/fitness blogger to write about KSU Professor Mark Haub’s little weight loss experiment. The coverage has been practically nonstop, after all. So […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9,24,28,29],"tags":[683,834],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4167"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4167"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9919,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4167\/revisions\/9919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}