Episode 173 - Complete

Vinny Welsby1h 11min

Vinny Welsby

00:00

You're listening to the face buddy Podcast Episode 173, the psychology of hunger. I'm your host, Vinny Welsby. Let's do it

Vinny Welsby

00:24

Welcome to this episode. And just to let you know where I am, in case you don't know I'm in Vancouver, which is on the stolen occupied traditional an ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples, Squamish, slaver tooth, and Musqueam nations. Today, we have a replay episode for you, this episode came out a couple of years ago, and looking at the most popular episodes, this was, this is one of the most popular of 2021. So in case you missed, it has a replay for you. And even if you did listen to it, there's probably lots of things that you forgot. Even me, I'm the one who's creating the content. And I have things that I forget that I'm talking about. And this one is really, really interesting, really interesting about the different studies and basically, the same. The kind of a thing that I'm taking away from this is that calories to a point where we are starving, which is actually a lot more calories than we probably think, is really not great for us. And we've known this for decades and decades and decades, like the three main studies that were more studies and stories that we're looking at today are from 1944 to 45. So yeah, it's pretty bananas that we're still like eat less food and will become thin. That's definitely going to work and definitely not going to harm us. Anyway, and there's pretty some Pretty extraordinary stuff. That happens. That's going to be in this episode. So let's leave it to Vinny of the past to tell you all about it. Okay, so today's episode, I want to give a massive trigger warning, because we are getting into it today. And it's this is kind of a heavy episode. So if you're not in a heavy episode kind of mood, then leave this for another time. But if you aren't, then let me tell you that well, let me tell you what we're gonna be talking about. So I'm going to be mentioning calories. Kind of like how many calories induces hunger, right? Types of food that people were eating in an experiments, talking about starvation, eating disorders, self harm, murder, the Holocaust, and death and autopsies. So although I mentioned all of those things, they are brief mentions, I don't go into, into details. It's not graphic or explicit, but they are mentions of all of those things. And so that is a, you know, check, check your mental health, see how you feeling if they say they feel good or not. And I'll tell you when we're getting into the kind of Holocaust murder stuff, because that might be maybe the heaviest stuff and the starvation, death, autopsies, that type of stuff. I'll tell you when we're getting into that stuff before. And so what I'm going to do is I'm talking about three different things I'm talking about. First, the Minnesota starvation experiment. Then I'm talking about the Chava or Warsaw Ghetto hunger study. So that was during World War Two. So that's Holocaust stuff. And then talking briefly about the children of hunger Vinter. And that's not as I'm just kind of that's kind of like a briefing. So it's just how the effects of starvation on pregnant people and their offspring. So that's the flow of the of the flow of today's episode. I started writing this episode yesterday, and I was like, oh, you know, I'm gonna bust this out. hour or 212 pages of notes later. Like, oh my gosh, because, you know, the Minnesota starvation experiment, you've probably heard of that one before if you were in the anti diet world. And looking into that, because I thought I'll just talk about that, because I've never spoken about that and the psychology of hunger. And then and then I discovered the, the Chava, the Warsaw Ghetto hunger study, and the the other one as well when I was like, Oh, shit, like, we need to highlight the this information as well. So who knows how long this episode is gonna be? Well, you know, because you've already seen, you can see the you can see into the future and see how long the episode is. I don't know. I can't see into the future quite yet. I'm just checking on my recordings. Are they still going? Oh, so Christmas miracle, they're still going. Oh, okay, so I, there's a bajillion different links here, in this episode. And so to go to the show notes, to find the links of all of the my sources, go to first party.com forward slash 094, because we're episode 94. If you ever forget the link, then you can just go to face it forward slash podcast, and you'll find the most recent episode right at the top. So there's a lot of links in here. Okay, let's start with the Minnesota starvation experiment. I'm gonna go into a lot more detail. Maybe then you've heard before, maybe you don't even know what the Minnesota starvation experiment this experiment is. And so let's talk about it. And the reason why I've called this episode, the psychology of hunger is one of the articles I read by Dr. David Baker and Natasha, Kara Midas was titled that and I was like, Yeah, that's really. Yes. I like that. So, yeah, I thought that was a good, I thought it was a good interesting kind of flip alum flinging rhubarb. You know, I'm saying title. Anyway, okay. So Minnesota starvation experiment was started in 1944. In November, that was when World War Two was still ongoing, but coming to an end, at the University of Minnesota football stadium. So, during that time, starvation was rife due to World War Two. And so they wanted to know how to help folks recover from starvation. So, quote, it was recognized early in 1944, that millions of people were in grave danger of mass famine as a result of the conflict. And information was needed regarding the effects of semi starvation, and the impact of various renewable rehab rehabilitation strategies. If post war relief efforts were to be effective, so at this time, do you know what or not it is so heartbreaking? A lot of people because they didn't have information on starvation and how to treat it? Well, they didn't have this is kind of like a brand groundbreaking study. And so a lot of the allied forces when they went in and found people who were starving, they would give them condensed milk, because I thought, oh, it's really it's got a lot of sugar and, and fat in there. And so this is going to be great. And actually, depending on the level of starvation, folks, their bodies couldn't handle it, and it would cause a lot of people to die. And I'm just like, oh, shit, that's so heartbreaking. And this study showed that they needed a slow refeeding to get their body used to eating again. And that was the safest way. So Ancel Keys, PhD, was the Physiol physiologist in charge of the experiments. And so Ancel Keys did general supervision of the activities in the lab, and it was called the laboratory of physiological hygiene. Such a funny like old word, isn't it hygiene. So, starting in 1941, quote, he served as a special assistant to the US Secretary of War and worked with the army to develop rations for troops in combat the K rations and so they made rations for for people who the troops and he was applauded for that but there's a lot of scandal around Ancel Keys Ancel Keys in 19, seven To do promoted the Adelphi quit let's body mass index, BMI, the BMI scale as the best way to measure health. And so, and there was other scandals about around Ancel Keys.

Vinny Welsby

10:20

And yeah, so he pushed the BMI. And then it was popularized by the National Institute of Health in 1985. So he's a motherfucker to blame a Dolphy who created the BMI scale? 200 years ago said, listen up here. Motherfuckers don't you'll be using this to measure health or measure people as an individual level. This is a population stats thing. Okay, you hear me? And then Ancel Keys in 1972 was like pitch. I don't care what you said about it. Um, I think it's a great way to measure people and their health about you know, their fitness levels, like Ancel Keys, I bet was like a raging fat phobe, like guaranteed guarantee, like reading some of it as collect quotes for him. I'm like, Oh, my God. He sounds like a real fucking snooze fest. And I bet you were like, Oh, the people who participated in this study were like, dream about this motherfucker, because he staffed them. Anyway, Ancel Keys got approval from the War Department to get participants from the CPS and so the CPS was a civilian public service. And it was a program that the US government provided for conscientious objectors. So conscientious, conscientious objectors are people who were like, No, I don't want to go I don't I don't agree with the politics of killing people, or the politics of war or whatever. My conscience doesn't allow me to participate. And I would probably be a conscientious objector. I don't know. Maybe I wouldn't have enlightened 45. You know, if I was a bad anyway, I probably would have because of the pressure and the shame, of being a conscientious. That's that word is hard. Come see anxious, calm, see anxious objector. Like I bet you they got so much shit from people. Anyway. So these conscientious objectors were still there were a lot of them were very, very eager to help in any way they could, which which was not killing people. And so they had this alternate alternative to military service, called the CPS. And so they sent out a brochure to the CPS folks, which is the conscientious objectors, and 400 people applied, and 100 people were tested to see if they would be a potential good fit for this. And so 36, white men aged between 22 and 33, were selected. And these people were like, can't these people who applied there well, they were known as being really eager to help and a lot of people would call them human human guinea pigs. And a lot of them would undergo any scientific experiment, because they want it to help the war effort. And so the people who were picked the 36, white men who were picked were assessed to make sure that they were physically and psychologically well, and they had to be able to get on with others and be really resilient to. And so theoretically, these were kind of people who were stable and strong and fit and healthy with good personalities who got on with other people. So the labs chief psychologist was called Joseph brozik, PhD, and he was responsible for gathering all the psychological data on the effects of star vacations. And Ancel Keys kind of ran the round the show and then there was lots of other people who you know, kind of run the kitchen and supervise what people were allowed to eat and yeah, all sorts of different tests they were this study was known to have so many different tests and it really good data because they were very clear on the information that was being obtained. Okay, so for this study called for the men to lose 25% of their normal body weight and the people who were selected kind of like had a variety of of body weights, not all of them were, quote unquote, like average normal weight, be quote unquote Standard. So the first stage of this 12 month, there's 12 Month 12 month experiment was the control period. And so that last of the control period lasted three months and the men ate. I'm going to mention calories here. So skip ahead 10 seconds if you want to hear calories. So the men ate 3200 calories a day. The idea was to get them as close to the, quote, ideal weight as possible. So, so the 3200 calories wasn't like, seen as a lot of calories, it was kind of like, let's see if we can get them as close to the ideal weight. And so if people were fatter, or thinner, they're like, Okay, well, according to the BMI, they should be X amount, so let's get them to that. And so even then, they recognized and, and it was all on on the metabolism, even then they recognize that people were just naturally bigger because of their metabolism, which is bonobos, that was in 1944. You know, they're showing this stuff, then, like, what, so they recognize that, you know, men had these men have different metabolisms. And so they adjusted the amount of calories for each one. And so again, mention of calories, skip forward five seconds, overall, the 3200 calories, made the men slightly below their, quote, ideal weights. And during this period, they will monitor to see how they were doing. And so just that, you know, like they were already beginning to suffer from in the control stage. And so then, so that was three months control stage, monitor them. And they were doing so they were free to go about their daily lives, but they had things that they had to do. And so they had to do 15 hours of work per week in the lab. It's not known if if I didn't know if that was strenuous activity or not, presumably, in the lab, it's probably data entry and shit like that. And they had to walk 22 miles per week. And so that was 35 kilometers. And they had to do educational activities for 25 hours a week. And so that's what they were doing outside of having their food monitored. So then they did six months of the semi starvation, or starvation. And that was, I'm going to say calories, skip forward five seconds, and that was 1570 calories a day. So So almost 1600 calories a day, were given divided between breakfast and lunch. And the foods they were given during this time were common foods because I wanted to give them food that people in Europe were eating so and had access to and so the foods they were eating were potatoes rutabagas, which is a root vegetable, turnips, bread and a macaroni cabbage with token amounts, in quotes. I don't know what token amounts, a little bit of meat and dairy products. So that was the same amount of calories. That diets that are not extreme diets are recommending. Okay, just keep that in mind. So there was this photo that I saw of the of the men you can go and look up photos online. And I saw themselves as photo this really thin man licking his plate at the dinner table, which was apparently common alongside other behaviors and so, quote, they diluted potatoes with water held bites in their mouth for a long time without swallowing, or labored over combining the food on their plate, making weird and seemingly distasteful concoctions. So they were basically playing with their food, becoming fixated on their food, drawing out the experience of being able to eat. Continuing quote, standing in line at the diet kitchen before being served was a source of explosive conduct conduct. At the table they often turned on one another annoyed by each other's voices and then increasingly strange eating habits that many men developed. They would cuddle the food like a baby or handle it and and look at it. Look at look over it. As they would some gold they played with it like kids making mud pies that you know, the explosive conduct and so they were probably really fucking annoyed and irritated and unable to

Vinny Welsby

20:16

handle things, you know, handle the line handle other people being weird with food and then like probably, you know, treasuring the food too. And so Jenny Craig, for example, prescribes meal plans, I'm going to mention calories, get 45 seconds meal plans as low as 1200 calories. And so this is what it you know, six months and this is you know, during the six months, it doesn't necessarily mean the six months is doing to these men. I'm not even mentioned all the other consequences yet, but what will the fuck would 1200 calories do and you are trying to go about your life and do shit, right? You're not in an experiment where you can only work 15 hours a week, you know? So, quote, food became the sole source of fascination and motivation. Many men became obsessively collecting recipes, stayed up and stayed up until 5am Last night studying cookbooks, right one, they found themselves distracted by constant daydreams of food, some sublimated their cravings by purchasing or stealing food. One man began stealing cups from coffee shops that guzzled water seeking fullness, does that sound familiar? Some took up smoking to stave off hunger and others chewed up to 30 packs of gum a day until the Liberty laboratory banned it. Meanwhile, all other elements of life seem to fade into mere background noise. Over and over again, the researchers reported indifference and boredom when it came to personal development, and basic socializing. Budding romances collapsed and sexual desire evaporated, and parties or subjects found conversation both difficult and pointless. They all preferred a solitary trip to the movies, adding that while they could recognize comedy, they never felt compelled to laugh any more. In a store when shopping, they were easily pushed around by the crowd. The research team reported their usual reaction was resignation. Sometimes this permeating dullness gave away to moments of inexplicable euphoria, followed by an emotional crash. One subject was eventually eliminated from the project for sneaking unauthorized food in town. After doing so he found himself so quote high that he stopped at 17 Soda shops on the walk home. He cared when he kidded with a fountain girls thought the lights more beautiful than ever felt that the world was a very happy place. The researchers reported this degenerated into a period of extreme pessimism and remorse. He felt he had nothing to live for and he had failed miserably to keep his commitment of staying on reduced rations. So from the the men then moved into the restricted rehabilitation period of three months. So for three months they were eating skip forward five seconds calorie mention 2000 to 3200 calories a day. So this was restricted, restricted. The participants quote, the participants were divided into four groups of eight men each group received a strictly controlled rehabilitation diet consists consisting of one off of one of four different caloric energy levels. In each energy level group, the men were further subdivided into subgroups receiving differing regimens of protein and vitamin supplements. In this manner, the clinical staff examined various energy, protein and vitamins strategies for re nourishing the subjects from the conditions of famine. Let me just repeat that the conditions of famine, so the same amount of calories that common diets and not extreme diets, these are the healthy diets, the diets that are what what is what is it that the diet people say, sustainable diets and they're saying that is conditions of famine, and those consequences that the participants are facing in regards to their emotions? We've not even spoken about the physical consequences so So, in this age, they were really surprised to find that even though they were now allowed food, more food, their mental health continue to decline. And so they weren't allowed food, more food, and their mental health continued to decline. And so they had eight weeks of that kind of restricted rehabilitation. And then they went into eight weeks of unrestricted rehabilitation. And so there they were no limits on how many calories or what foods but everything was monitored and noted. And so whatever they ate, they it was noted down. And so sound familiar? Oh, how many diets tell you that you have to, you know, write down what you're eating. Okay. So this whole time again, sight, it's tight, scientists were like we're marching how they were doing their mental health or physical health. And so before the experiments, an amount of weight loss was predicted, and so they guessed that the men would lose a lot of weight. And then they would plateau and like, so in 1944, they knew that reducing someone's calories would lead to weight loss, and then a plateau yet, and selkies was still saying that people needed to not be fat. And I quote, based on the concept that the rate of weight loss would progressively decrease and reach a relative plateau at the final weight, so yeah, so even in 40s, we knew that weight loss was starvation. And it would plateau. They predicted it before they even study even even went ahead, and that's what happened right. So the results, the results, the results, there were significant increases in depression. They use the word hysteria and hypo con dri Yes Sis so which is being a hypochondriac. I'd say that in quotes, like, as many as many as you using they so they had a Minnesota multi, multifaceted Personality Inventory. So they've got this sort of testing that they would do. Most of the subjects experience periods of severe emotional distress and depression, as well as significant decreases in their strength and stamina, stamina, body temperature, heart rate, sex drive, and they had a gone to parents, quote, this. psychological effects were significant as well. Hunger made the men obsessed with food, they would dream and fantasize about food, read and talk about food and savor the two meals a day they were given. They reported fatigue, irritability, depression and apathy. Interestingly, the men also reported a decrease in mental ability. So they should sign so they showed showed signs of social withdrawal and isolation, a decline in concentration, comprehension, and judgment capabilities, as we know, when you restrict your food, even and so this this is showing, even so if these men had restricted food, and they were then allowed to have unrestricted food, more food to begin with, and then unrestricted, and they were still fixated on food. So continuing quote, some of the subjects expected x exhibited edema. So edema is bruising in their extremities, presumably due to decreased levels of plasma proteins, proteins, given that the body's ability to construct key proteins like album is based on available available energy sources. And again, this is not even some very low calorie diet. This is what a lot of people would say was is very safe and reasonable and good and fat people should be doing this. So the rehab phase, which is the you know, eating was said to be the most difficult phase and one man, Sam leg, chopped off three of his fingers with an axe, and he said he didn't know if he did it deliberately or not. So quote, I admit to being crazy mixed up at the time. Let A leg later explained, I am not ready to say I did it on purpose, I am not ready to say I didn't. And quote, deprivation itself drove these men to quote, the threshold of insanity.

Vinny Welsby

30:17

The metabolic rate was also changed. Like I need to add another thing on to that

Vinny Welsby

30:26

metabolic rate was changed. Obviously, not everyone completed the study, one man didn't lose enough weight for his data to be considered. So in that control, period, and three, were found eating extra food. And imagine, imagine if you were one of those four men, and you're you one couldn't lose enough weight in the control period. Because, you know, your body was like, I'm Excuse me. I like being I like being chubby offer, like what are you doing? And that, the shame of that. And then if you're one of the other ones who were kicked out the, the imagine that drive to eat food, and already maybe feeling guilt for being a conscientious objector. And then the amount of shame that they might have felt that they couldn't even participate in this simple study of not eating. I feel terrible for them. Like, I wonder how that affected them. Like, can you imagine? And thinking, oh, there must be something wrong with me. Like, you know, why can't I just stick to this diet? And, and I see it as these four people, their bodies were just Rockstar bodies, their bodies were like, I ain't falling for this tom foolery. No, you're gonna eat. So I see their bodies is doing exactly what they were meant to do. Right. And so they were amazing, incredible bodies. And those men should not feel any should not have felt any shame or sadness, or guilt or anything, any of that stuff, because not so and even after the study ended, there were reports of men still being incredibly fixated on food, obviously. And one man even had to go to hospital for seven days after having his stomach pumped. Because he just couldn't get enough food like that. That hunger, that hunger of not the physical hunger. But that deprivation, hunger, I think you know what I mean, of when we're dieting, that that it's like, it's like an itch that can't be scratched. And it's just deprivation. So much so that this guy was in hospital for seven days, I can imagine what he was feeling. Going into that. And then imagine the type of shame he was feeling that he had to have his stomach pumped and being ASBO. Others said they ate constantly. And surprise, fucking surprise. After the study, the men ended up wearing more than what they started, they started at the beginning of the experiment, which mimics many of the similar experience experiments like this, from 1907 until 2009. Teen. So study other studies that are like this, they are monitoring people who have lost weight due to illness or people in the armed forces who have lost weight because they didn't have access to food. And so they're studying people who it wouldn't be ethical to do this starving participants, you know, it wouldn't be ethical. And so when people are in those situations, they will use that data. And guess what the people who have experienced these events have weight loss, they will end up being heavier after they recover. Which is again like so from 1907 This was established that not eating enough food is going to make you fatter and as well, like the studies show that people who regain weight or regain regaining more fat, more adipose tissue, which, you know, is not a bad thing, but they're they're showing like, Oh, it's a bad thing because it's not like they they're gaining muscle or whatever. But you know, it's not a bad thing, but they were saying or it's a bad thing. So this study was really famous and it got got loads of attention at the time and quote on July 30 1945, a photo published in Life Magazine showed the shirt was bony. participants. So there's there's you can go and find lots of different photos. And so in May 1945, the war was over and they were only halfway through the starvation portion. And so they were the experiment experiment hadn't hadn't concluded because there was they were looking to see how to refeed. And so, the experiment continued until December 1945. And before it was over to help with the post war, starving folks, they made a pamphlet and leaflets, and like a 70 page thing to give out to aid workers to help people who were seeing the effects of starvation, which was just slowly feed them. And then in 1950, so five years later, after the end of the experiment, they published their findings in this really big book, entitled the biology of human starvation. quotes here, one of the crucial observations of the Minnesota starvation experiment discussed by a number of researchers in the Nutritional Science in Nutritional Sciences, including Ancel Keys is that the physical effects of the induced semi starvation during the study closely approximate the conditions experienced by people with a range of eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. As a result of the study, it has been postulated that many of the profound social and psychological effects of these disorders may result from under nutrition and recovery depends on physical renourishment as well as psychological treatment. Yeah, so yeah, it's a really good point, like, you know, you would think like bulimia. It's sitting there saying Bulimia is closely approximating the conditions experienced by these men in the study. And I mean, they don't go as far as to make the connection of dieting. And as well, when we think about our anorexia, we always think about thin people, but it's more common actually, a typical quote, a typical anorexia shouldn't be just anorexia is, is more common in fat people. And so, if we think about this, let me repeat this. The physical effects of the induced semi starvation during the study cloaks closely approximate the conditions experienced by people with a range of eating disorders, such as let me just put this in myself fat people with anorexia. As a result of the study, it has been postulated that many of the profound social and psychological effects of these disorders may result from undernutrition and recovery depends on physical renourishment as well as psychological treatment. And so just to recognize that there are so many fat people with anorexia, and even it doesn't, you don't need to have a diagnosed eating disorder to be experiencing these things. Because again, it is an amount of calories that a lot of people would say, Oh, that's very reasonable. Yeah, that's not too bad. Yeah, that's fine. That's good. That's safe. That's the word that I was trying to think of Safe, safe way to lose weight. Really? Is there a safe way? Okay, so, here final quote from this study. About yesterday, we were starving under the best product possible medical conditions. And most of most of all, we knew the exact day on which our torture was going to end said leg. So Sam leg the person who chopped his fingers off. well aware that millions had no such comfort. But his body didn't know that and are hardwired survival instincts don't know the difference between a 30 day cleanse and a famine either the binges or fixation that enduring hold or food anxiety. All these symptoms ring true to anyone who's experienced food restriction, voluntarily or not. Perhaps the most chilling correlation, the postponement of living. How often do we put off something until we've lost the weight? That familiar inertia is obvious, but what this study indicates is that it might not simply be our desire to wait for a thinner body to start dating, take that trip or pursue a career goal. It may be also the hunger itself. of keeping us at home alone and waiting. So that that quote and the quotes, which is the less like technical stuff is from Kelsey Miller, who wrote a piece for refinery 29 Is it 29? Fire 2020. About that. So, obviously, Kelsey is a great writer, and then a lot of the other stuff is kind of just dry text.

Vinny Welsby

40:29

So, and another thing to consider is that these men, presumably, we're not deeply fat phobic in relation to their own bodies. And so presumably, they weren't motivated by that shame of living in a fat body. And so, they struggled with all of those things, and, you know, eating and being eating more than their body wanted, and, and being fixated on food and feeling all of these really distressing things. And they didn't also have that other components of internalized fat phobia. And these were white men, right. And so they also weren't experiencing all of the different stigmas that different marginalized identities have, and what effects that has on people's health. You know, so it, and they were working 15 hours a week. Most people who are dieting are trying to just get on with their life. And you know, people will have jobs, full time jobs, or part time jobs or going to school or, or imagine, imagine if they were having to do like university exams, or imagine if they were having to make projects for their work. Or imagine if they were trying to start a relationship or, you know, anything. Lena said in there, that, Oh, my budding romance has died off. Because the only thing that mattered was food and being fixated on it. And that doesn't go away when you stop dieting, and it doesn't go away in a certain amount of time, because we're still in our minds, putting restrictions on ourselves. Even if we are so far away from the last diet, whether we ever did years and years and years away, we still have these restrictions that we're putting on ourselves mentally, we're like, we might not be physically restricting. But we're mentally restricting and saying, like, Oh, I'm such a bad person, because I ate that thing. And I really should exercise that thing off, and I really Lella only these these, you know, narratives that we have going on in our mind. So it's like we're in that experiment for potentially years and years and years. That is, that is a lot, right, isn't it? It's a lot. It's a lot. And this was just six months of them in that, that semi starvation phase? And the whole experiment being 12 months. And so six months? How, how long have you dieted in your life? Probably more than six months, right? I know I have. And so imagine if you've dieted for 12 months, that's a double the effect theoretically, or two years that's quadruple the effect that these men were experiencing. So now I'm going to be talking about the for Chava. That's the Polish way of saying Warsaw, which is the English way of saying it, the Chava Warsaw Ghetto hunger study. And so this is talking about people within the Warsaw Ghetto, which is I'm going to be talking about these people who were Holocaust victims. So if you don't want to hear that, then I'd say skip to the last 10 minutes of the show. Because this is really heavy stuff. And I really I wanted to include this stuff. Because, you know, I'm not correlating dieting with being in the Holocaust at all. I wanted to include this stuff because of the incredible work that the doctors and scientists did under an imaginable conditions to get this information out. And it's it's not as widely distributed. And so this was going on in In this kind of the same time as the Minnesota starvation experiment, and has way more data, way more participants, and because you know, because of ethics. This is not something that can be recreated. And bravely, the scientists saw this opportunity to get this information out when they knew that they probably would never see this published themselves. And so we all know we're not we all know, you know, a lot of people know about the Minnesota starvation experiment that was run by white dudes who perpetuated fat phobia. But let's look at the the Warsaw Ghetto hunger study, which is an incredible, remarkable study that was done. And still, we don't have enough information about this, because the study was it was smuggled out of the ghetto. And it's not widely distributed in English. And to get a copy of the study, it's, I was reading up that to get a copy of you know, a manuscript is that the right word manuscript is like 1000 bucks. And so hopefully, people are trying, people are working to try and get this, this information out there even more to recognize the work that these people did. So the, in case you don't know the Warsaw Ghetto, was a walled sealed district in Warsaw in Poland, and half a million people were there in that tiny little area that was just about one square mile wide. Hey, Victoria, from the future here, I'm just listening to some bits of the podcast here. And before we go into this section about the the Warsaw Ghetto, just a mention on language here, I noticed that a couple of times when I'm quoting articles, there is the word Jew. And I'm not sure if I say that independently. And I was just doing some research on whether the preferable languages Jewish people, Jewish, people's Jewish, or Jew, and there seems to be conflicting. From from my my quick research, there seems to be conflicting ideas from from Jewish people about what they prefer. I think that Jewish people is the probably closest to what most Jewish people would prefer. And so I just want to recognize that and apologize for using that word. Even though I was reading from articles, I should have spotted that as something that might be seen as dehumanizing or offensive. So just an FYI, that is coming up. So yeah, just wanted to make a note. So, this this happened in February 1942 and 28 Jewish doctors, headed by Israel, Miller kowski decided to use the famine to conduct this extensive study of the physiological and pathology of hunger. So, quote, Milla kowski thought in practical terms, he wanted to understand how hunger disease could be cured. It was another physician, Dr. Julian, FlyDubai who was the potential of who saw the potential of such a study who created the whole research platform, he wrote that this was a singular opportunity to study hunger and that he wanted to do so with the best tools at his disposal disposal, so that the results would have incontrovertible scientific validity. So they had 150 participants so you know, imagine with the the not even imagine, the Minnesota starvation experiment had 36. And so they had 150 participants, which was a phenomenal number and it was adults and children. And so the Nazis rationed out a certain amount of calories per day, depending on your status that they decided. And so Poles who were not Jews, I'm gonna mention calories here, got 1000 calories, other other folks will get less, and the least would go to Jewish People who were rationed out 180 calories a day. So the theory was, I think it was eight of ALEC Eichmann decided that, that with 108 calories, the ghetto would be liquidated in nine months. So everyone, you know, the the Jews would be dead in nine months.

Vinny Welsby

50:24

But they managed to get soup kitchens in the ghetto, they managed to smuggle in food, they were not about to let the Nazis do that to them, you know, starve them. And so they came up with so many ingenious ways and took massive risks to get food into the ghetto. And to feed others, there was a soup kitchen at a number of soup kitchens, that would make up to 100,000 meals of soup every single day. So these participants, they were put into one of two hospitals and the doctors, so they would come in, and the doctors would make sure that they had access to food through the black market, even though the doctors were desperately hungry. And so they even gave them sugar, which was priceless. And so in, in the study participants, they were given, so the people in the ghetto, I'm gonna mention calories here, they depended on how rich you were consumed, perhaps 1700 calories a day, and the pourer, around 800 calories a day. Again, so they, they smuggled in, because it took a while to do to get all the equipment, right. And so women would smuggle in all of these different testing devices and tools and all sorts of different things. Because they weren't, they were to these two hospitals. But then, you know, hospitals in the loosest sense of the word, they didn't have medicine, they didn't have equipment, basically, they had a few beds, and the hospitals were there to watch people die, basically. And they had a ton of incredible minds there. And you know, all of these wildly successful and intelligent doctors. And so women would smuggle in these, the medical equipment, because men, if they were caught, they would have a look at to see if they were circumcised or not. Whereas women, if they're caught, they could deny that they were Jewish, and hopefully escape the harshest sentence. So they would feed these people, they will do the refeeding of the of the participants. So do the refeeding from a depending on what what they were eating before, depending on their wealth within the ghetto, and what access that they had. They, they began refeeding them and quote, it was found that the adaptation to starvation did not reverse even Lee when abundant food became available. So with these participants, they would isolate them. So they would isolate them in rooms within the hospital so that they wouldn't be affected by infectious disease, or diseases going around the ghetto. Vaccines and medicine were not allowed in the ghetto. And so they really was extensive, to keep these people isolated so that that data was good. And so they weren't being affected by other things. It was just the access to food. So they the equipment that they smuggled in, they did equipment for blood tests, they examined the acidity of the digestive system, hormone levels, which is bananas for the time, even glucose tolerance levels. So this was absolutely remarkable that they were doing all of these things. And they called the effects of this starvation, the hunger disease, and so they came up with that term, but hunger disease, I'm going to mention autopsies here. If a participant died, then they autopsy them to make sure they didn't die from anything else. And if they did, and the data from that that person was removed from the study, they actually did 1000s of autopsy autopsies adopters there to to study and learn from, from what was going on and try and give that information to others, which is just just so remarkable that that was happening. So what they found from this study was, quote, The first stage is a decline in the reserves of fat. The second stage is next Other rated aging of all the body tissues the final stage which is relevant for our time is called cachexia. Sometimes irreversible decline in the mass of body fat and muscle in children are also affects the bones. Quote, The results of these studies showed that the body made a series of complex circulatory and metabolic changes during starvation. Metabolic output is very low and even resting mytub metabolism was well but note below normal. Most of the clinical changes the slow heartbeat the low temperature that lack of movement and the shallow and slow breathing were to conserve energy. Continuing quote, at first there is what's known as hunger madness, people became verb become violent, people are ready to do anything anything in order to eat and get food cannibalism can occur killing theft. The Minnesota study dwelt on this stage because they wanted to understand the behavior of POWs prisoners of war. This study describes how they had to restrain the subjects with force because they were willing to do anything to get food, they wanted to eat everything, including non foods. After the madness comes a stage of apathy. You're hungry, but you don't want to eat food is no longer of interest. The subjects in the ghetto were already in that phase. They were apathetic. So the study ended in August 1942, with the grace action of a Chava, which is the great action, which was the Nazi codename for the deportation and mass murder of the Jews of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto during the summer of 1942. Beginning in July Yeah, and so they were they Nazis used the euphemistic jargon resettlement to the east and they were sent to Treblinka, which was a death camp. Of those who led the study, only one survived. Maybe a couple, actually, a couple two survived. And so the manuscript when they started doing the, the the grace action, the deportation, they, it happened over the summer, right. And so the doctors knew what was happening, they knew what was coming. And so they knew that they needed to get this information out there and make this study and make this report and bring all the findings together, to send off for others to learn from. And so quote, on July 2219 42, just when the studies were going full swing, mass deportations from the ghetto began, the work was suddenly interrupted but not abandoned. The charts and tables are painfully gathered, dated the rough drafts all that was available were hurriedly gathered together and carefully hidden, lest they be lost. Whatever had been saved of the accumulated data were systematized and edited. This final stage was carried out in one of the buildings in the Jewish cemetery, those physicians still remaining in the ghetto held mill meetings at the risk of their own lives to decide what should be included in the manuscript. They had no hope that they themselves would survive to see its publication, but they went on with their labors nevertheless, confident that future generations would find in the research on hunger and inspiration for scientific investigation. So the entire manuscript was published in 1979, by John Wiley and Sons under the title hunger disease studies by the Jewish physicians in the Warsaw Ghetto. So there was two so two people two people who were in the study managed to get out Dr. Apfel bomb, and another doctor Henrik Phoenix Stein. So Dr. Phoenix sign was captured so quote, was captured by the Nazis in 1943. As a ghetto was burned. He was transferred to multiple camps and couldn't Auschwitz before going to Dachau, where he was liberated by the US Army on April 30 1945. Following liberation, who worked at the U N. R, a hospital in Munich, in 1948. He joined the ops, obstetrics and gynecology department at the Munich University poly poly clinic before immigrating to Canada. There he had two successful medical careers, one as an obstetrician and the other and the second as a psychiatrist specializing in the problems that confront many of the Holocaust survivors and their families. To the other doctor, Dr. Apple bomb, died in 1946. He had a heart attack in the street and died in 1946, unfortunately, and everyone else the information is not confirmed but presumed died due to the mass murder at Treblinka, on the way to Treblinka.

Vinny Welsby

01:00:27

So something that came from this study is the knowledge that giving a starving person food will kill them. And so this came from this study, sorry, I said that it came from the Minnesota starvation experiment, but but it didn't, because we, in the Minnesota starvation experiment, they weren't able to recreate the weren't able to do this right. And so, this study, this important study was shown that if you try to refeed people, then they will die within 24 to 72 hours. And so, a final note on this is Miller kowski, the lead researcher here in the preface for the study, ended it with the words, non ominous, Maura, I shall not die, I shall not wholly die. And so Dr. Miller kowski knew that he was facing imminent death. And this was his and his colleagues. Work that was going to live on after them. So I think it's really important to talk about this this study. And, again, just a big FYI. I'm not comparing what happened in this situation in the Warsaw Ghetto, with dieting, because it's it's totally different. But I think it's important to know that there is another study that is similar to the Minnesota starvation experiment done under extreme circumstances, to risk their lives to do this work so that people can learn about hunger, I think is really, really important. And and I don't think that the the, yeah, I don't think the focus should all be on the Minnesota starvation experiment because there's other stuff out there, right. So okay, so finally, let's talk about the children of the hunger Vinter. So, quote, I'm going to link to this this article about this article saying, This is what hunger does. And it talks about the children of hunger Vinter so important quote from this, this piece, important information on hunger and malnutrition was a mass in the Netherlands to during the war. By 19. By September 1944, the southern southern Netherlands had been liberated in support of the Allied events. The Dutch government in exile in London called for a national railway strike. The Germans retaliated by banning food transport by train to the urbanized West, surprising cities quickly ran out. To make matters worse, the cold weather arrived earlier that year and it was unusually harsh. Thus began the Hunger Winter, or the hunger Vinter which is, which cost an estimated 200,000 lives. So looking at what happens to pregnant women in the winter of 1944 to 45, the average pregnant Dutch woman didn't gain weight she lost it. babies conceived and born during the hunger vinta weigh less than those whose lives had begun in peacetime. Their bodies and heads were smaller, they're more likely to die at birth or in the first three months of life. Dozens of research projects since the 1960s have examined birth records from the period the most famous makeup the Dutch, the most famous make up the Dutch famine birth cohort study. For 20 years and counting researchers have been tracking the health of men and women born in winter 1944 to 45 Amsterdams of Wilhelma gaseous hospital tool will help Villa Mina gas gaseous hospital. The findings are staggering. They show that malnutrition and a mother has listed lasting negative effects on a child's health. The foundation for many own of illnesses cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancers, cancer all laid in the womb, a baby suffers a cancer crisis of its mother mother's hunger, all its life, the effects of the most severe when the mother goes without sufficient food in the first three months after conception, when vital organs like the heart, brain liver, for children conceived or born during the Dutch famine were more like more likely to encounter psychological problems such as depression and schizophrenia. Since our bodies had learned in the womb to process nutrients as efficiently as possible, they were prone to becoming fat later, but they use your word. So that is a roundup of, of information, information, information, inflammation, of the inflammation. So all of this to say that not eating enough food is a serious thing with a lot of consequences. And these effects start at what what, what some would say is a reasonable amount of calorie intake. And so, if you are on a diet, you are literally unable to flourish in your life, because of the things that are happening to your body and brain. And even when it's over. And you're out of the diet. Many of us are still hyper fixated on food, and feel out of control around food, and the result of restricting food. Dieting is disordered recovering from dieting is, oh God. And again, I think about all of these people, they weren't trying to lose weight due to fat phobia, and so would happily eat food when they could. The difference is that a lot of us are given the ability to eat food, but we don't give ourselves the freedom. And so we may as well be stuck in the starvation phase that's mentioned in the Minnesota starvation experiment. So trigger warning mention of calories. If we look at the Chava ghetto hunger study, the children of the hunger Vinter and the Minnesota starvation experiment, a diet of 1600 to 3200 calories has shown to cause people to be obsessed and fixated on food to the point of fighting over it and playing with food or treating it like a baby like coddling food, stealing food and feeling ashamed, guzzling water, seeking fullness, eating things that aren't food or chain smoking or eating sugar free gum constantly. extreme highs with long lasting crashes, depression, emotional distress, decrease in muscle mass strength, stamina, body temperature, heart rate, metabolism and sex drive, increased fatigue, irritability and depression, social withdrawal and isolation, a decline in concentration comprehension and judgment capabilities, a plateau of weight loss, and then increased weight gain and long term negative effects. And so if we think about the Minnesota starvation experiment that lasted the starvation phase lasted six months only, how long have you dieted dieted at something like 1600 to 3200 calories a day, which a lot of people would say is maybe too much calories, and this is the effect that it had on these people. And some would say 1600 calories is a very reasonable amount of calories for someone who is looking to lose weight in a quote unquote, safe way. And it's not. It's not and even in 1944, they knew that reducing calories would lead to temporary weight loss, and then plateau weight loss, and then increased weight gain. So why are we still thinking that we can come up with something else? And even when we are are done with our diets, we are still so affected by that restriction that we put ourselves through. And so, if we think about like, this is this has been, you know, 1600 calories, is seen as starvation in an experiment in experiments. Why is it reasonable that we do that to ourselves in the hopes of temporary really losing weight. So I hope that

Vinny Welsby

01:10:05

this episode has been informative. And if you're feeling any feelings about the stuff that that we've spoken about today, just give yourself some some self care. It's not your fault. It's not my fault that we have been sucked into dieting. We have been lied to and information misrepresented and it is not okay and so all this to say it makes sense that we are fixated on food, we can be fixated on food, even if we're not dieting because restriction does a whole shit ton to our bodies and our brains. So sending big fatty hugs to you. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. Thanks for hanging out with me today and I will see you in a while alligator stay fierce Fanti goodbye.

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