Twelve kilograms were shed in two months. Consuming only Twinkies, Doritos, Oreos, and sugary cereals. This was the improbable outcome of an experiment conducted in 2010 by Mark Haub, then a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, who wanted to test a simple question on his own weight: what if only the calorie count mattered, regardless of where those calories came from?
The wager could be summed up in one sentence. Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate industrial pastries every three hours in place of real meals as part of a personal experiment for his students, with the aim of examining the role of caloric deficit in weight loss. A radical way to test whether the first law of thermodynamics really takes precedence over the nutritional quality touted by all dietary guides.
Key Takeaways
- A nutrition professor ate only junk food for 60 days with a single controlled parameter: calories
- His cholesterol fell and his weight dropped, but scientists refuse to draw hasty conclusions
- He hid his Twinkies from his kids — an instructive experiment but deeply inapplicable to daily life
An Improbable Menu, But a Very Strict Calculation
On paper, the regime reads like a nightmare for a dietitian. For ten weeks, at least two-thirds of his intake consisted of Twinkies, Little Debbie cakes, Doritos, sugary cereals, and Oreos. A typical day included a double espresso, Twinkies from Hostess, a Little Debbie Star Crunch, a Diet Mountain Dew, Doritos Cool Ranch, Kellogg’s Corn Pops, whole milk, carrots, and a brownie.
The professor did not merely browse pick-and-choose from supermarket shelves. His diet, two-thirds snack-based, also included a multivitamin, a protein shake, and canned vegetables. He ate some fresh vegetables as well, like green beans and asparagus, and occasionally a protein shake. The real lever that made all the difference was caloric counting: every bite weighed, every package logged. Despite a diet consisting mostly of junk food, he kept his intake to 1,800 calories per day, roughly 800 calories less than what his body needed to maintain his weight. Nothing else in his routine changed: he maintained the same level of moderate physical activity as before starting the regime.
Numbers That Make Cardiologists Sit Up and Take Notice
Two months later, the verdict was in. Haub had dropped from about 91 kilograms to roughly 79 kilograms, with a body mass index shrinking from 28.8, in the overweight range, to 24.9, within the normal range. His body fat followed the same trajectory: from 33.4% down to 24.9%.
What followed the headlines was the science section. His LDL cholesterol fell by 20%, his HDL cholesterol rose by 20%, and his triglycerides decreased by 39%. Markers typically associated with a high-fiber, low-sugar diet—not with a regimen built almost entirely from candy-store fare. Haub himself admitted being perplexed by his own blood analyses. “That’s where it becomes unsettling,” he reflected. “What does that really mean?”
A detail worth noting: the early phase of the experiment did not go smoothly. At first his triglycerides, cholesterol, and blood pressure rose, before his body adapted and the indicators reversed completely. It was a stubborn reminder that the body does not respond in a straight line to such a drastic dietary upheaval.
Why Nutritionists Refuse to Draw a General Lesson
Dietitian Dawn Jackson Blatner sums up the matter with a straightforward formulation: “When you lose weight, by any method, even with industrial foods, those markers tend to improve.” It isn’t the magic of Twinkies that corrected his cholesterol; it’s the weight loss itself, mechanically linked to caloric deficit.
This nuance changes the conversation entirely. It also fed into a debate within the scientific community. Some observers noted that the lipid profile improvement—lower LDL, higher HDL, and lower triglycerides—was expected after about a 12-kilogram weight loss, given that lipid profiles are closely tied to weight: as you slim down, they improve—full stop. So the Twinkie diet would not prove that a processed pastry is equivalent to a vegetable, but merely that a sufficient caloric deficit reduces weight and, with it, some cardiovascular risks associated with obesity.
Haub, ever the cautious professor, never presented his experience as a method to follow. He was not ready to draw conclusions about the long-term consequences of a Twinkies diet, and no one should expect changes to official dietary guidelines. This is reinforced today by most health professionals consulted as a case study: a study on a single individual, conducted over two months, says nothing about micronutrient deficiencies, the impact on the gut microbiome, or chronic inflammation that years of such a diet could provoke. While the experiment demonstrates the power of caloric control, it raises concerns about long-term health due to nutrient gaps.
There remains a paradox that few diets confront so directly: Haub ate his cake packages in secret. To avoid setting a bad example for his children, he ate vegetables in front of his family but unwrapped and consumed his Twinkies away from the dining table. An almost comic image—a nutrition professor forced to hide his snacks from his own children—summarizes the whole experience: scientifically instructive about the mechanics of weight, but entirely inapplicable as a lifestyle.
Sources: boxlifemagazine.com | medboundtimes.com
