Are You Strong? Or Starved?
Feb 03, 2025
How close is your health or weight management diet to what’s been labelled as “starvation”?
Let me share a few things about a famous study on dietary restriction - The Minnesota Starvation Experiment - and you can tell me if what the participants experienced sounds familiar.
The Minnesota Starvation Experiment (1944-1945) was a groundbreaking study led by Ancel Keys at the University of Minnesota to understand how caloric restriction affects the body and mind. The goal was to help develop strategies for rehabilitating people suffering from famine in war-torn Europe after World War II.
The study recruited 36 male volunteers and had three phases:
- Control period (three months of normal eating at around 3,200 calories per day),
- Semi-starvation phase (six months at roughly 1,500-1,800 calories per day, mimicking real-world famine conditions)
- Rehabilitation phase (three months of controlled refeeding followed by an unrestricted recovery period).
Since women generally require fewer calories than men, the Minnesota Starvation Experiment's 1,500-1,800 calorie "starvation diet" would be equivalent to around 1,200-1,400 calories for many women. Shockingly, this aligns with popular weight loss programs today.
The effects of this experiment were brutal. Participants experienced muscle wasting, fatigue, depression, irritability, social withdrawal, and an obsessive focus on food. Some even resorted to self-harm.
The study also showed that the only way to truly recover from starvation was adequate calorie intake, not just protein or micronutrients.
It’s alarming that programs resembling the Minnesota Starvation Experiment are legally sold as weight loss solutions today. Companies charge people to endure severe caloric restriction, leading to muscle loss, fatigue, obsession with food, and psychological distress—effects identical to what was documented as starvation in the study. Yet, it’s marketed as “health.”
The Minnesota Starvation Experiment remains one of the most important studies on starvation, metabolic adaptation, and eating disorder recovery, showing just how devastating prolonged caloric restriction can be on both the body and mind.
For info on the subject of weight loss check out the Strong Not Starving blog post titled: Sustained Weight Loss, Is it possible? If so, how?
Marcus Kain - Nutrition Coach, Strong not Starving Founder