Lose Weight Eating Twinkies?!

How would you like to go on a diet where the primary food group is Twinkies?

Nutritionist Mark Haub, who is an associate professor of nutrition at Kansas State University, wanted his students to debate this question: "As long as basic nutritional needs are met, is it what you eat or just how much that counts?" As a starting point for the discussion, he turned himself into a human guinea pig.

For one month, Haub made himself the center of an experiment--and he is quick to firmly point out this is an experiment and not a new diet. For those four weeks, he ate pretty much nothing but Twinkies, Nutter Butters, canned or frozen vegetables, a protein supplement, steak, milk and a daily multivitamin. He restricted his caloric intake to 1,800 calories a day and kept his physical activity the same. And he lost 15 pounds.

"I knew I could lose weight doing this, but I had no idea what was going to happen to my cholesterol. That's why I made it only four weeks, because I had no idea how it would affect my health," he told ABC News.

Everything that is logical and rational says this diet of sugar and chemicals should have made him feel ill. In fact, just the opposite happened. Not only did he feel healthier, but also he had more energy. He stopped snoring. And he lost enough weight that he drove down his overall cholesterol and body mass index (BMI). His HDL "good" cholesterol rose two points and despite all that "creme" filling in the Twinkies, his blood glucose dropped 17 percent.

Huh?

Diet experts told ABC News that losing 15 pounds--no matter how you do it--is bound to make you feel healthier in the short term. Still, they warn these changes could be deceiving since over time, a diet that is rich in processed, sugary food can in no way be beneficial to your health.

"He's not the first person to lose weight on an unhealthy diet. You could eat all chocolate cake and lose weight as long as you didn't eat too much of it. Stay on this diet forever and he'd have some unpleasant consequences," Carla Wolper, a researcher at the St. Luke's Hospital Obesity Center, told ABC News.

Haub lost weight because he consumed fewer calories. "We've made altogether too much over fat versus carbs and it's a huge distraction for the most part. The fundamental truth is that energy balance, calories in versus calories used, determines weight, and this reinforces that," Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale Prevention Research Center, explained to ABC News.

The takeaway: An unhealthy diet lacking in proper nutrients, such as one where Twinkies are a major food group, will be felt by the body eventually, although it may take years. Meanwhile, it's OK to enjoy a Twinkie or two as long as you watch the total calories you consume.

--From the Editors at Netscape

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