The Minnesota Starvation Experiment: A Brief Summary

In 1944, conscientous objectors of WWII were placed on a diet of 1600 calories for six months to determine the effects of semi-starvation per European war rations of the time.

The men, who were physically and psychologically healthy at the start of the experiment, started demonstrating behaviors previously unfamiliar to them as the experiment went on.

Some of the men began bingeing on stale cookies and rotting bananas, eating leftover orange peels, and reported feeling tempted to rummage through garbage for food during unsupervised time.

The men also reported feeling anxious, irritable, depressed, and fatigued.

Even after caloric intake went back to "normal," the men reported feeling obsessed with food, hoarding food, and eating excessive amounts of food for months, and in some cases years, at a time.

The binge response to modern-day dieting (which is considered semi-starvation by any other definition) is physiologically and psychologically appropriate.

They Starved So That Others Be Better Fed: Remembering Ancel Keys and the Minnesota Experiment . Leah M. Kalm,Richard D. Semba. The Journal of Nutrition, Volume 135, Issue 6, June 2005, Pages 1347–1352, https://doi.org/10.1093/jn/135.6.1347

The psychology of hunger. Dr. David Baker and Natacha Keramidas. October 2013, Vol 44, No. 9. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/10/hunger

Dieting and the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. December 18, 2017 https://chicagobehavioralhealth.wordpress.com/2017/12/18/dieting-and-the-minnesota-starvation-experiment/