The Minnesota starvation experiment

Factual Questions
1

Someone linked to this in the “why do fat chicks wear unflattering clothes” thread in the pit. It was the first time I’d heard of it. It puzzles me, and I have some vague questions about it.

[QUOTE=the article]
The primary objective of the Minnesota Starvation Experiment was to study in detail the physical and psychological effects of prolonged, famine-like semi-starvation on healthy men and their subsequent rehabilitation from this condition. To achieve these goals, the 12-month study was parsed into four distinct phases:

Control Period (12 weeks): This was a standardization period when the subjects received a controlled diet of approximate 3,200 calories of food each day. In addition, the clinical staff of the Laboratory of Physiological Hygiene routinely conducted a series of anthropometric, physiological and psychological tests designed to characterize the physical and mental health of each participant under normal conditions;

Semi-Starvation Period (24 weeks): **During the 6-month semi-starvation period, each subject’s dietary intake was cut to approximately 1,800 calories per day. **Their meals were composed of foods that were expected to typify the diets of people in Europe during the latter stages of the war: potatoes, rutabagas, turnips, bread and macaroni.
[/QUOTE]

So they started out at 3200 cal. a day, which is a lot, a whole lot, in fact, and dropped, in starvation mode, to 1800 cal. a day. Still plenty of calories, more than I usually eat in a day (although I’m a woman, and it seems that these subjects were all men). Still, 1800 calories does not seem like starving to me. And yet…

WTF? I realize that’s a vague question, but what’s going on here? Many people have to spend their whole lives on fewer calories than that just to maintain a normal weight. 1800 cal. a day also seems like much more than famine victims, which this study was suposed to help, get. What am I missing here?

2

I would have been starving in high school if I only ate 1800 calories a day. Depending on your activity level a large range of caloric intake can be normal. Your link states that the diets were tailored to induce a 25% weight loss over the 24 week period. They were all probably more active than you.

3

“most of the subjects experienced periods of severe emotional distress and depression”

Not to make a Prairie Home Companion joke about morose Minnesotans, but the subjects would have all have spent their childhoods in the Great Depression, which, although the upper plains were spared the dustbowl, were still pretty rough. I’ve gone weeks on less than 1500 cals a day, but it didn’t trigger terrible childhood memories.

4

Well, for someone of my size, 3500 calories a day is about what is needed to maintain weight. (I’m big…a bit overweight, but not obese…but tall with a muscular build with some padding. :slight_smile: )

Cutting to 1800 calories a day for me would cause me to drop weight RAPIDLY. 1800 calories a day will maintain weight for someone roughly 120-130 lbs iwth an average activity level. For me, when I was in the best shape of my life (a competitive swimmer in high school…lean, strong, and really ripped), I needed about 2800 calories to maintain weight when I WASN’T in training, and 4000+ to maintain weight while I was in training.

5

[QUOTE=Snarky_Kong]
I would have been starving in high school if I only ate 1800 calories a day. Depending on your activity level a large range of caloric intake can be normal. Your link states that the diets were tailored to induce a 25% weight loss over the 24 week period. They were all probably more active than you.
[/QUOTE]

Perhaps. I walk 3-4 miles a day, I’m 27, not overweight (nor underweight), actually pretty active. I also don’t think my diet is particularly unusual–I know several women who eat a lot less than I do and aren’t underweight. Maybe these guys were working out a lot, but if so that isn’t mentioned in the link, unless I missed it.

Does no one else think that 1800 calories/day isn’t starvation level? If people in 3rd world countries are getting 1800 cal/day, do we really consider that famine conditions?

6

From the (admittedly brief) description, it sounds at least partially like “rabbit starvation” - not enough fat in the diet. You can be feeling very unwell even if numerically calories appear sufficient.

In addition, According to the wikipedia, the men were required to work and walk 22 miles a week. Lastly, the indidivudual diets were calibrated so that each person would lose 25% of their body weight over a 24 week period. So, clearly, for the individuals, 1800 calories was a starvation diet.

I am a 5’2" woman, I’d be gaining weight on 1800 calories – I walk a mile daily and train karate 4 days a week.

7

Not sure from the Wiki article, but… were the men isolated in a house out on the prairie somewhere? They’d have to be kept away from food 24/7, I’d think. And did all of them make full recoveries?

8

With statements like
“Participants exhibited a preoccupation with food, both during the starvation period and the rehabilitation phase. Sexual interest was drastically reduced and the volunteers showed signs of social withdrawal and isolation”

it seems that Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theory is taking place.

Being trumped only by breathing and drinking, if your eating needs aren’t met nothing else is really going to matter to you.

9

IIRC, remarkably even in the starvation phase, the subjects were willing to trade food for tobacco. Remarkable.

10

Maybe the emotional distress was due to the menu, and not the caloric content?

11

You need approxamately 11 calories for each pound you weigh to maintain your weight. This is the reason why most people stay fat. They eat too much. The 2000 calorie a day thing is way too much. (170 pound person needs 170 X 11 = 1870)

My grandmother in Europe lived in Russia during WWII and lived on 1100 calories a day and though she came out of the war very thin, she was healthy and worked to support the war effort.

The fact is unless you consistantly raise your heartrate to at least 60 percent of your resting rate you don’t alter your metabolism, so the result is you’re still buring the same calories.

For instance when I took part in a study of calories at the U of Chicago, I had a halter monitor. On the three days I exercised my heart rate overall was 71, on the three days I didn’t my heart rate was 73. Approx the same. What happened was my body compensated for the high heart rate when I ran by lowering it at night. For instance on days I exercised my heart rate was as high as 149 but at night it went as low as 50. On days I didn’t exercise it remained between 65-80 beats per minute. You see the body compensates so you don’t get any benefit from exercising unless you do it regularly and consistantly.

Now a heartbeat isn’t a direct indicator of burning of calories but it gives you an example of how your body compensates to maintain the status quo. This is why activities like gold, baseball and such don’t amount to more calories burned than sitting at your computer, cause the small amount of additonal activity will be offset at night when you sleep.

Only by pushing your body does it grow in muscularity as well as raise your metabolism.

I work as a personal trainer with a university and I eat 1800 and have a great body, I eat what I want and I am very healthy. People just refuse to accept food is fuel and just as putting more gas in a car doesn’t help it run faster, same for your body

12

I read (well, not every page from every chapter, but most of it, in smart-skimming fashion) Todd Tucker’s book The Great Starvation Experiment. What the Wiki article fails to mention is that these young men were encouraged to not only exercise (primarily walking about the campus; IIRC it was something in the neighborhood of three miles a day, in all sorts of weather), but maintain their original schedules of classes and jobs. Plus, some of them were athletic to begin with, so they were starting out with attractively muscled bodies with little fat. (Others, however, were rather flabby, so it was a varied mix in the study group.) By and large, they found it untenable to maintain these schedules as the starvation kicked in in earnest. The book’s photos make clear what losing some 25% of your body weight does to the typical college-age man who weighed about 150 lbs. to begin with. Many of the subjects successfully lost weight to the point that their ribcages began to show and they convincingly sported that “concentration camp” look.

Although they were being housed, fed, weighed/measured/tested in various ways in the area underneath the old campus football stadium (since demolished), they enjoyed considerable freedom of movement. What’s amazing is that only two of the test subjects cheated by obtaining food on their own outside the confines of their diets.

Unfortunately, the Minnesota experiment proved to be of limited value in providing information to help guide the rehabilitation of the starving millions of WWII, the primary impetus behind the experiment, mainly because it was undertaken several years too late to be of great use. The scientists involved had to rush to produce a cursory, preliminary report that was pressed into service, IIRC, one or two years after V-E Day, but the final report wasn’t published until 1950 (as noted in the Wiki article.)

Nevertheless, the experiment did shed light on various aspects of starvation trauma. Starvation was found to take a greater toll on mental capacity, cognitive functioning, memory, and sleep patterns than had been previously realized. The Minnesota experiment also dispelled a myth that starvation could improve a person’s eyesight; instead, IIRC, some improvement of hearing in some of the subjects was noted. And perhaps most importantly, it was established that, provided a starved person is prevented from fatally overeating in the initial phase of his rehabilitation, once he’s accomplished that critical first phase of recovery, he can be trusted to satisfy his own nutritional and caloric needs without overly close or patronizing supervision – and that allowing those recovering starving people to eat as much as they want allows for faster recovery than imposing a more gradual recovery diet, which is unnecessary and, to the subjects, odious to adhere to.

13

If there’s anything to the low-carb nutrition theories, than a diet that’s low in calories AND almost nothing but carbs is about the worst combination you could have. That and the sudden drastic loss of body weight as opposed to a period of acclimation.

14

[QUOTE=B_A_Bay]
Now a heartbeat isn’t a direct indicator of burning of calories but it gives you an example of how your body compensates to maintain the status quo. This is why activities like gold, baseball and such don’t amount to more calories burned than sitting at your computer, cause the small amount of additonal activity will be offset at night when you sleep.
[/QUOTE]

Cite? Intuitively, this makes no sense. If people who engage in activities like golf, baseball etc during the day can save equivalent calories by some sort of efficiency at night, such that they experience no net increase in calories burned, then the corollary must be that people who do not engage in activities like golf, baseball etc during the day burn equivalent calories at night for no reason whatever. Why the heck would that be true?

15

[QUOTE=Paul in Saudi]
IIRC, remarkably even in the starvation phase, the subjects were willing to trade food for tobacco. Remarkable.
[/QUOTE]

Not really. Smoking makes for one hell of a good appetite suppressant and low-grade painkiller. Add the addiction to that and the choice is a no-brainer.

16

[QUOTE=Airman Doors, USAF]
Not really. Smoking makes for one hell of a good appetite suppressant and low-grade painkiller. Add the addiction to that and the choice is a no-brainer.
[/QUOTE]
An ex-colleague of mine once told me a story of how he had a financial crisis in his time at college. He had 3 days until he had more money available, 1 large jar of coffee and sufficent cash for food or cigarettes. He bought cigarettes, and subsisted on the coffee.He’s still smoking, recently had his 2nd heart attack.