I was thinking of titling this post “Today’s News You Can’t Use.” Instead, I’m not gonna spend a lot of time on it, but hey, gotta get back into the blogging habit.
So, in case you missed it, a nutrition professor at Kansas State University lost 27 lbs eating Twinkies and other junk food over a period of 10 weeks.
Pardon me for not being impressed.
Big whoop. He restricted calories for 10 weeks. Yawn. There are millions of folks who have restricted calories and lost weight — temporarily — only to see the weight come back.
Regarding his premise:
pure calorie counting is what matters most — not the nutritional value of the food
Yeah, if what you are trying to demonstrate is short-term weight loss. His experiment did that quite well — for him.
As I said, millions of dieters have proved that fad diets work initially; that’s what makes them popular. And that’s all this is — a fad. And fad diets are a great way of feeding the scary spiral known as yo-yo dieting. Blech.
[As an aside, wonder what’s up with the guy who lost weight doing a McDonald’s diet?]
Skip the fads! And as a general rule, be wary of any “science” that is posted on Facebook rather than a peer-reviewed journal.
Update, 11/10: More on the Twinkie diet from my regular reads.
Stephan Guyenet: The Twinkie Diet for Fat Loss
Tom Naughton: The ‘Twinkie Diet’
Yoni Freedhoff: Amazing new diet! Man eats fewer calories than he burns and loses weight!
John Briffa: Is this the dumbest nutrition ‘experiment’ ever performed?
Don Matesz: The Twinkie Diet: A Paleo Dieter Perspective
Weight Maven is written by Beth Mazur. Beth believes that obesity is more symptom than cause and that the real problem is our modern culture -- especially diet. Beth writes about ancestral health, health policy, & mindfulness. And cats! 
Good post and points well articulated
Presently by “science” we mean the matter science nutritional approach, that is, measure (to include calories) So the “twinkie” diet works from his matter science view He measured calories, ate twinkies, and lost weight He proved the matter science approach works in terms of measurement
But as you point out, we know this approach isn’t long lasting which is the argument for an energy science approach for a more balanced way of doing nutrition
I blogged about how to determine the value of the energy science nutritional approach about a month ago http://bit.ly/cyGbAB
Nice to have you back :)Bill