The Twinkie Diet

You may have heard of the old "Twinkie defense"-the one that was used by Dan White after he had shot and killed San Fransisco mayor Moscone, and gay rights trailblazer Harvey Milk. As Wikepedia tells us: "White's defense was that he suffered diminished capacity as a result of his depression. His change in diet from health food to Twinkies and other sugary food was said to be a symptom of depression. The media misinterpreted this defense as a claim that sugary food was itself responsible for White's criminal behavior. White was convicted of voluntary manslaughter."

That, of course, was silly, but is it even more incredible than the nutrition prof who went on a "Twinkie diet"-and proceeded to lose 27 pounds? As CNN Health reports: "For 10 weeks, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate one of these sugary cakelets every three hours, instead of meals. To add variety in his steady stream of Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, Haub munched on Doritos chips, sugary cereals and Oreos, too. His premise: That in weight loss, pure calorie counting is what matters most -- not the nutritional value of the food. The premise held up: On his "convenience store diet," he shed 27 pounds in two months."

Calling Dr. Farley and his soda brigade-another example of the fact that Big Nanny hasn't a clue: "But you might expect other indicators of health would have suffered. Not so. Haub's "bad" cholesterol, or LDL, dropped 20 percent and his "good" cholesterol, or HDL, increased by 20 percent. He reduced the level of triglycerides, which are a form of fat, by 39 percent. "That's where the head scratching comes," Haub said. "What does that mean? Does that mean I'm healthier? Or does it mean how we define health from a biology standpoint, that we're missing something?"

However you slice the Farley mandates, it's still baloney: "Families who live in food deserts have limited access to fresh fruits and vegetables, so they often rely on the kind of food Haub was eating. "These foods are consumed by lots of people," he said. "It may be an issue of portion size and moderation rather than total removal. I just think it's unrealistic to expect people to totally drop these foods for vegetables and fruits. It may be healthy, but not realistic."

But, as we have seen, the facts don't get in the way of the busybodies' urge to dictate how we should live. But Haub's experiment is instructive-and gives us a clear indication that we can educate people to live healthier lives without stigmatizing any one particular food or drink: "His success is probably a result of caloric reduction, said Dawn Jackson Blatner, a dietitian based in Atlanta, Georgia. "It's a great reminder for weight loss that calories count," she said. "Is that the bottom line to being healthy? That's another story."

So, it's a more complex picture than the Bloomberg cohort of nannies would have us believe. But, given Haub's success, we just may be approaching the situation described by Woody Allen in Sleeper, where, sometime in the future, diets rich in high fat content are healthy habits. Still, Dr. Haub's experiment is a cautionary tale for the Intruders who exercise little caution themselves in their zeal to force us to be healthy.