‘The Twinkie Diet’ Guy Dr. Mark Haub Regrets His Experiment Went Public

Filed under: Podcast — @ December 7, 2010

In Episode 424 of “The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show with Jimmy Moore,” we kick off a special “Extreme Diet Week” featuring a couple of people who have gone on some rather unusual eating experiments. You might recall my “eggfest” experiment earlier this year that resulted in some interesting findings. But while eggs are a fantastic low-carb option, what would you think about doing a diet that consists primarily of Little Debbie snack cakes, Twinkies and other junk food? That’s exactly what Kansas State University nutrition professor Dr. Mark Haub did the past few months with an experiment that gave him international media attention when it was featured on CNN just last month.

Listen to Dr. Haub talk about how he delved into the subject of nutrition originally through exercise physiology, how he met Dr. Eric Westman and Dr. Mary Vernon to become exposed to the low-carb message, why he decided to go on a “junk food diet,” the low-carb study he collaborated with various low-carb researchers on in 2005, why he doesn’t expect anyone to necessarily go on a Twinkie/Little Debbie diet, why he believes junk food in and of itself isn’t obesegenic, how this diet actually more closely resembles a high-fat, low-carb diet, his hunger and cravings while on this experiment, his acknowledgment of the individuality of diet, his thoughts on the USDA Dietary Guidelines, what made him decide to do this junk food diet and what he expected to happen, his only regret about doing this experiment, the changes he saw in his lipid and blood sugar panel during this project, whether he measured LDL particle size, why he was surprised by the attention his project received, the polarizing feedback he’s received from his nutrition colleagues, why most diet and exercise plans tend to fail, why he intended for his “Twinkie Diet” to be for his fellow nutrition professionals and not the consumer, whether he’d ever do another “extreme diet” experiment like an all-egg diet, why not everyone can follow a low-carb lifestyle change, his willingness to explore other similar diet experiments, what his diet was like prior to beginning his junk food diet, whether he got the kind of response he was hoping for, and his reaction to Tom Naughton’s FAT HEAD documentary.