I see fat celebrationists cite the Minnesota Starvation Experiment all the time on Tumblr and other eating disorder apologist sites* and of course their understanding of it is completely wrong or utterly misleading as the conclusions they think have been reached were not what they study actually found.

Like this garbage.

First of all, the participants were fed a very restricted diet — and I don’t mean (just) calorically. They were fed bread, potatoes, turnips and food like that to match what the people in the throes of WWII had available to consume. In case you don’t know, that means that they were not getting adequate basic nutrients and thus would experience enormous nutritional deficiencies due to lack of protein, niacin, etc. And what does your body do when it lacks protein? Shockingly, it breaks down your muscles to subsist.

Second, the participants were expected to walk or run 22 miles a week (in addition to their normal routine) and burn at least 3,000 calories a day. I know that no house-sized tumblrite re-blogging this burns 3,000 calories a day or walks 22 miles a week. Maybe 22 miles a year. So how is it relevant to them?

Look, I know everyone wants to be considered a perfect little paragon of virtue after eating a whole ice cream factory and dying of diabetes-related gangrene and sepsis at 53, but the world won’t work that way and in my opinion it should not. Citing studies you don’t understand and have hardly read anything relevant about won’t help your cause. It just makes you look like an idiot outside of your little group.

Also, I eat somewhere between 1,200 to 1,400 calories a day and have for many years now (about 10) and I am just fine — because unlike the participants in that study, my diet is fairly well-balanced and I don’t generally burn 3,000 calories a day (which is a huge amount, by the way).

Tumblr FA types are like the flat-earthers of nutrition and diet, but actually have less understanding comparatively.

*Weighing 300+ pounds is an eating disorder just as much as being anorexic.