http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html

For losing weight its calories, not the form those calories take, that matters. Bottom line is that if you take in fewer calories than you burn you lose weight.

Vitamins and enough roughage to keep things flowing helps but the losing weight part is simple.

Maybe, but the KIND of weight you lose is important. If you're losing mostly muscle, then look forward to gaining back all your weight and more in the near future. For the people who have weight Yo-Yo problems, it's probably because you're not losing weight the healthy way.

There is no evidence he lost any significant amount of muscle mass. Testing showed he most lost fat.

It's unfortunate the way this story is portrayed, at least the way I first saw it on CNN. It's not like the documentary Super Size Me where Morgan Spurlock only eats McDonald's food as his entire diet for a month. This guy is not stuffing his face with Twinkies (he eats like 5 a day spaced out over the day), nor are they his only source of daily nutrition.

Unfortunately, I think the message that undiscerning people get from the story is that it's perfectly OK and healthy to eat mostly junk/snack food and to just eat as much of it as you want. The food giants must be loving this story.

I remember an interview with the guy who invented the Twinkie. Discussing the filling he noted: 'It's made of lard and powdered sugar, all natural, nothing wrong with that'. The problem with Twinkies, and other fast foods, are that they contain a lot of calories in a small package so it is very easy to exceed the calorie needs of a normal, low energy, westerner.

Eaten quickly, and until you feel full, you can easily double or triple your caloric requirements. Do that frequently and you will gain weight.

The lesson I took from it ties in well with what our evolutionary ancestors did. Our ancestors didn't know beans about vitamins, balanced proteins, or ratios of fat/protein/carbohydrates. Performance may not have been optimized but the human body can make due with just about anything.

If the central goal is losing weight the key is to limit calorie intake. Worrying about getting food-group ratios just right and diddling around with micro-nutrients are both largely irrelevant.

That is not to say you won't feel better with some casual attention paid to the niceties of vitamins, roughage and leaning on vegetable products. Fact being that dieting is a lot easier using a lot of leafy greens. They have such low calorie counts for any set unit volume means that you can much more easily feel full while staying within caloric limits.

First off, this guy had 33.4% body fat before this experiment. Apparently, he dropped to 24.9%, which is still pretty darn high. I'm not listening to any advice this guy has about anything related to the body and nutrition. He mixed the Twinkies with Doritos, Oreos and sugary cereal. Given his horrible body fat percentage, that diet was probably an improvement.

He was able to lose weight by counting calories, and that's the overall message. Nevertheless, this is not a good way to lose weight because his nutrition was atrocious (but relatively better for him?).

No word on Arterial Sclerocsis Either,with that kinda' crap buildup in his system,He will have an Over abundance of Platelet buildup,He's gonna' have a Stent installed,Before long!

I think his goal was mostly to make a point about all the fad diets. For weight loss, the traditional approach is still the best - eat food, not too much, mostly plants. It doesn't matter if you're on the Atkins diet, the South Beach diet, or the Twinkie diet - if you reduce your calorie consumption, you'll lose weight.

It's more important to focus on portion sizes than on eliminating any particular food group. The trick is making sure you're still getting enough vitamins and minerals, regardless of what diet you're on. Even with his daily multivitamin, protein shake, and canned veggies, I'd be worried about his vitamin and mineral intake. I would wonder about the effects of his limited diet over the long term.

I will give this new item the attention it deserves. The last Twinkie I ate was probably 20 years ago. I will now probably go out and eat another one just for old times sake. Then I'll forget all about it. ;-)