A Popular History of Unpopular Things
A podcast that makes history more fun and accessible - we love all things gory, gross, mysterious, and weird!
A Popular History of Unpopular Things
The Minnesota Starvation Experiment
Happy First Birthday to the APHOUT podcast! It's been a wild ride full of cannibalism, adventures gone wrong, and all kinds of gore, and I can't wait to keep it going!
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Join Kelli as she discusses the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, a test during WWII where 36 unpaid volunteers willingly starved themselves half to death to get concrete data on starvation and how to rehabilitate the starved.
Though nobody died from starvation... the results were pretty shocking. And of course, cannibalism makes an appearance.
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Source referenced:
The Great Starvation Experiment by Todd Tucker
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Happy one-year anniversary to the APHOUT podcast! One year ago, I took a chance and posted my first episode on the Donner Party. One year and 27 episodes later, here we are! It’s been really fun to build this podcast and watch it grow, and I look forward to so much more cannibalism, exploration, adventures gone wrong, and gore. Thank you so much for being a part of the journey, and cheers to another year!
Intro
Welcome to A Popular History of Unpopular Things, a mostly scripted podcast that makes history more fun and accessible. My kind of history is the unpopular stuff - disease, death, and destruction. I like learning about all things bloody, gross, mysterious, and weird.
Okay, so today’s episode is going to be fuuuuuun. This episode was a request from one of my cannibal patrons over on the APHOUT Patreon, Nil Humphries. So thanks, Nil! This one’s for you!
If you want to request an episode, or you have a topic you know would be perfect for the show, then join my Patreon as a Cannibal - only my cannibals get exclusive privileges like requesting topics or joining my drop day livestream.
On November 19, 1944, 36 men volunteered for an experiment at the University of Minnesota to test the effects of starvation, a growing concern after many incidents of extreme hunger during World War II. It was an almost twelve-month study during which their daily normal calorie intake was reduced. The first 12 weeks was the control period, where the men were given a battery of tests to get some baseline data. After that, it was 24 weeks of what they considered starvation - their calories requirements for maintaining weight was cut in half. And during this period of time, the scientists studied not only the physical effects, but also the mental effects. After enduring a long 24 weeks, the final stage was 12 weeks of rehabilitation - the men were given more food, and the scientists studied how well they recovered.
Though the men had to endure great difficulties, none died in the experiment. The idea was to get information about how to rehabilitate a starving population - what combination of calories, proteins, and vitamins were needed to bring people back from the brink of death? Killing these men off, or torturing them to the point of death, was kinda not the point of the experiment.
Today, the idea of experimenting on humans like this just wouldn’t fly. But back in 1944-1945, which was also the tail end of WWII, these men volunteered to do this.
Historical Context
So before we get into the horrors of the starvation experiment, and APHOUT fans already know what’s coming, let’s first go over the *HiStOriCaL cOnTeXt.* For those of you who are new to the show, historical context is always the first thing I go over - we need to know what was happening in the world, in this period of time, that led to the starvation experiment. Why did this even happen? Understanding the historical context will give us the answer.
World War II was… well, it was a lot of things. It was a war between good and evil. It was a power struggle between political ideologies. It led to the deaths of upwards of 70 plus million people, possibly more, including military deaths, civilian deaths, and deaths from illness, disease, and famine.
But it’s that last part I want to focus on this time - famine.
Let’s talk about Leningrad, which is today’s St. Petersburg.
German troops sieged Leningrad from September 1841 until January 1944 - a prolonged blockade of 872 days. Hitler’s plan? Starve the city. If Leningrad’s population couldn’t get out, and they couldn’t get supplies in, then in time they would starve, and Germany would be victorious. Now to be fair, Leningrad did have access to a small pipeline of supplies coming through Lake Ladoga to the northeast, but it wasn’t enough to supply the entire city.
The starvation was so severe that over the exceptionally cold winter of 1941-1942, cold even for Russian standards, as many as 100,000 people starved per month. Their tiny rations weren’t enough to keep them fed, so they turned to alternative sources. Apparently potato was used to help create wallpaper paste, so they peeled their walls and boiled the glue for sustenance. They started to boil leather, too, turning it into a gummy, chewy thing that wasn’t super nutritious, but did the job.
Leningrad was also home to a zoo, so those zoo animals disappeared pretty quickly. Shortly after that, it was household pets. But when all the food rations were gone, when the animals were eaten, and when the alternatives were used up… I bet you know what happened next. And if you’re an APHOUT fan, you DEFINITELY know what happens next.
They ate each other.
First it was what I would consider to be your typical survival cannibalism - dead bodies, preserved in the snow, were eaten up. Survivors recount some pretty horrific tales. One, Daniil Granin, recounts that, quote, “A child died — he was just 3 years old. His mother laid the body inside the double-glazed window and sliced off a piece of him every day to feed her second child, a daughter.” End quote.
But soon, the living started to disappear - the elderly and children were the easiest targets, and as Todd Tucker writes in his book The Great Starvation Experiment, quote, “the children of Leningrad began disappearing. As rumors of cannibalism spread, it became illegal to sell any form of ground meat in the city, as the sources became too horrifically questionable. In one case, the bones of several dozen children were found inside the apartment of a concert violinist. Even his own five-year-old son was missing… by the beginning of 1944, as even corpses and children became scarce, there were reports of people cutting off their own body parts and eating them in a desperate attempt to stave off hunger.” End quote.
You get the point, right? Starvation, especially prolonged starvation like what we saw with the German blockade of Leningrad, can turn what was probably a normal, rational, sane population into one that turns to cannibalism to survive. Sources suggest there were around 2,000 prosecuted cases of cannibalism in Leningrad.
But it wasn’t just Leningrad - starvation was a tool that the Nazis used against their imprisoned victims in the concentration camps. Over in China, the Civil War between the Nationalists and Communists also saw widespread hunger and starvation, something that would continue throughout Mao’s Great Leap Forward, a disastrous attempt at industrializing China that led to the Great Famine, which claimed the lives of anywhere between 15 and 55 million people.
And we can even look at events in Europe before WWII to see mass starvation events - the Holodomor, or Ukrainian famine of 1932-1933, was Stalin’s attempt at collectivizing farmlands for the Soviet state. Modern estimates range from 3 to 5 million people that died from starvation as a result of Soviet policies.
So how does all that connect to the University of Minnesota, so far away from the starvation and famines of Europe and Asia?
Well, it was a mixture of politics and humanitarianism. But mostly politics.
Those of you out there who are history people may know that after WWII ended, our Russian allies became our enemies because of the stark contrast between the Western, democratic, capitalist way of life, versus the Eastern communist way of life. You know, the beginnings of the Cold War.
The man who led the starvation experiment, Dr. Ancel Keys, argued that a famished Europe would be sufficiently weakened - weakened enough for communist or fascist ideology to take root. After all, it was an economically ruined Germany that saw the rise of the Nazi party, right? Keys believed that understanding hunger, and its psychological and physical consequences, could help prevent the spread of communism, which would therefore be a victory for democracy.
I guess it would also be good to, you know, solve world hunger? Or at least understand how hunger changes a man? But that would be an issue Keys would explore through his experiment.
Regardless of which argument swayed his donors the most, Ancel Keys’ pitch worked, and he got the funding for what would come to be known as the Minnesota Starvation Experiment.
Choosing Volunteers
Now that Dr. Keys had created this starvation experiment, he would need volunteers. And I do mean volunteers - they chose to go through with this, and they weren’t paid. So who were these men who would volunteer to starve themselves?
Well, they were men who came from the Civilian Public Service, the CPS, a group of men who conscientiously objected to military service. COs, they were called. Conscientious objectors. When it was clear that the US was going to enter the war, men were called in when their draft cards were pulled, right? If they could convince the draft board that their objection to the war on moral grounds was legitimate, they would instead be put into the CPS - an alternative way of serving.
There were a lot of jobs that men in the CPS could have, again thats the Civilian Public Service, and the starvation experiment was one of them. It probably helped that the ads for this program had the convincing message of “will you starve that they be better fed?” It was a good way of appealing to the morality of these conscientious objectors - those that truly believed in pacifism, but still wanted to help support their country, were attracted to the idea that they could do something meaningful without betraying their core values.
When Dr. Keys sent out the ad for volunteers, more than 200 men responded with interest. And again - this was a whole year of volunteering, for free, to starve and be constantly monitored. That may seem like a really foreign concept in 2023, when I’m recording this episode, but consider the context - this was a chance for men, who were fundamentally opposed to war, to do something meaningful with their time in the civilian public service, something they had to do as an alternative of going to war. And a lot of people, men AND women, were very much into supporting the war effort however they could.
But Dr. Keys didn’t need 200 test subjects - so how did he whittle down the list?
First, he wanted men with already good health - having underlying medical conditions could potentially skew the results of his test. This went for mental health, too. A new tool had been released the year prior to assess mental health: the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. It was a pretty rudimentary check on mental health, but it allowed Dr. Keys to filter out men he believed were suffering from mental illness, or had the potential to break.
He also didn’t want married men - he wanted his test subjects to be completely focused on his experiment and his rules.
And I keep saying men, by the way, because it was only men in this test. In case that wasn’t assumed by this point.
Dr. Keys also wanted volunteers who could get along with others in difficult situations. This was a bit harder to test for, I suppose, so he relied heavily on various directors in other CPS programs. So let’s say you were transferring to Dr. Key’s experiment from a burn ward in Vermont - Keys would call up your director at that particular CPS program and ask about you. If you were short-tempered, or had an otherwise unfavorable attitude towards others, you’d be out.
Lastly, Keys wanted men who wanted to be there. Ones who felt compelled to help and had a genuine interest in service.
After weeding through the 200 applicants, using his criteria, Keys selected 40 men for a final screening, and of this 40, 36 were invited to officially join the experiment.
On average these men were 25.5 years old; the youngest was 20, the oldest was 33.
The average weight was 152.7 pounds; the lightest was 136.4, and the heaviest was 183.9.
The overall average height was 5 feet 10 inches tall.
They were also educated men - all of them had at least one year of college, and 18 had college degrees.
Each of the 36 were told of the potential dangers of this experiment, though I can imagine the risks were severely downplayed. They were also all screened for tuberculosis, since tuberculosis was commonly linked with famine and starvation. It wouldn’t be good if any of the men already had signs of tuberculosis before starving themselves half to death, right?
Oh, and if any of you are wondering at this point if it was normal to experiment on humans like this… kinda? Now this would change after the horrors of Nazi doctor Josef Mengele came to light, but American doctors did lead trials and experiments on humans.
For example, Dr. Walter Reed traveled to Cuba to test whether or not mosquitoes transmitted yellow fever - some men were exposed to the mosquitoes. Others were told to sleep on the bedding of infected men to see if it was bacterial or viral and could spread that way. The answer was mosquitoes, by the way. Yellow fever is transmitted through mosquitoes.
Dr. Mengele, though, did some… really disturbing stuff. He favored identical twins, so he could infect or operate on one and leave the other as a control. After the one he experimented on died, he would usually kill the other to see how their internal organs compared. This guy was the absolute worst.
And while I’m on the subject, even after the Nuremberg Trials exposed the horrors the Nazi doctors perpetrated on their victims, the US STILL continued human experimentation. But that’s a story for another day.
And although Dr. Keys’ experiment took place after WWII and after Mengele’s horrible research, like I said, the extent of the horrors wasn’t fully known yet, so it wasn’t completely outlandish at the time for human trials and experiments.
Phase One - the Control Period
As the test subjects arrived at the University of Minnesota, they found their new living quarters at the football stadium - that’s American football for my non-US listeners. The season had ended, so the entire place was virtually empty, and each volunteer got his own cot. There were also more than enough rooms to study the men individually and privately, so Dr. Keys felt pretty fortunate. Here’s what he said as he addressed the group of volunteers. Quote:
“Good morning. We are here because of the problem of relief feeding in general, and particularly in the war-devastated areas today. Accurate scientific data on the effects of starvation is almost completely lacking, and until it can be supplied, no really efficient program of relief can be planned or operated.
At what levels of feeding calories, proteins, and vitamins is rehabilitation most rapid and most efficient? How long can we expect famine victims to be reduced in work capacity? What are the particular areas of human function most affected? The answers to these, and a host of more detailed technical questions, must be provided if the most effective use is to be made of any resources for relief, no matter how small or how large.
Direct observations of famine victims in the field do not supply the answers because the necessary information on their pre-famine status is lacking and because field conditions are unsuitable for the collection of sufficiently exact information. It is fortunate that it was possible to establish this controlled project, if not to yield all the answers, at least to greatly reduce the area of our ignorance on the questions of vital human interest.
Human misery and want are qualities of life which properly bring an emotional response, but starvation is quantitative and must be met with quantitative answers. The service committees, the medical foundations, the University of Minnesota, and, not least, you, the volunteer subjects, have joined in a common effort to supply basic knowledge on how to achieve the highest food relief with fixed and obviously inadequate food resources. If our results allow an increase in efficiency of relief feeding by as little as five percent, we shall be able to reduce the sum of starvation suffering by an amount incalculably greater than would be possible with the same effort and expenditure on direct relief. And this gain is not limited to this year; it would extend to all time and all future food crises.”
End quote.
Wow. I mean, these guys already volunteered to be here, as a way to help their country and prevent starvation, so they didn’t need convincing. But I can imagine that they ate up everything Ancel Keys said and felt the patriotism of potentially saving lives through their suffering. Keys appealed to their altruism, and it worked.
The men were then measured - weights, heights, heart size, blood volume, hearing, vision, sperm count, fat percentage, you name it. Keys was interested in how fat would deplete itself as the body was induced to starvation levels. The average among all 36 men was 14% - so, not much, really.
Basically, if it could be measured, Keys measured it.
For the next 12 weeks, the men were in the first phase of the experiment - the control period. The goal was to figure out how much each man needed to eat to maintain his weight and all the other measured things - essentially, how much food to break even. Their meals were measured and controlled. Since they were also sleeping at the facility, they were closely monitored. Men who snuck food or otherwise messed up the experiment were removed. It was a scientific experiment about hunger, after all. Dr. Keys wanted to make sure all variables were planned - the results would be skewed if his subjects snuck food.
The meals during these first few weeks were, well, more than what I eat now, actually. Each man ate an average of 3,200 calories a day, over three meals, which is more than they probably ate normally.
To help pass the time, the men were also given jobs to do. This could be laundry or general maintenance work, some would help with lab work if they had any scientific experience - nothing too strenuous to skew the data, but something to keep their minds occupied. They were also given an education, despite the fact they were all relatively educated anyway. They took classes in language, sociology, and political science.
But something that was a constant throughout the whole 12 months, including the 6-month starvation phase, was a 22-mile-a-week walking requirement. And after a while, the men were scheduled to take a test in the lab called the Harvard Fitness Test - essentially, they would have to run on a treadmill until they collapsed. They would do this twice during the control phase so that Keys could get accurate baseline data. Here’s how the scientists described it to one of the subjects, Max Kampelman:
“You’re going to walk for twenty minutes at first, at 3.5 miles per hour, at a 10 percent grade. After that, we’re going to reduce the grade slightly, to 8.6 percent, and double the speed, to 7 miles per hour… for five minutes or until you can’t run anymore.”
Dr. Keys jumped in adding that the test is designed to push the men to their limits, something Keys was interested in learning as he argued it would be the same thing with the starvation experiment - he wanted to know how far these men could push themselves, so when they were asked to work when they were starving, he’d trust that the men were giving it their all. You know, for science or whatever.
Oh, and for those of you wondering, when it got to the 7 mph running speed, Max Kampelman pushed himself until he developed a cramp in his side, lost his footing, smashed his chin into the handrails, and bit his tongue when he hit the bottom of the treadmill. He only lasted 3 minutes and 20 seconds.
The 3-month control phase ended on February 11th, 1945. At this point, despite the anticipatory stress and in some cases physical pain of the Harvard Fitness Test, the men were feeling pretty good. The biggest complaint, shared by almost half of the men, was that they felt tired. But they were as ready as they could be for the next stage, the difficult and dangerous stage - starvation.
Phase Two - Starvation
February 12th, 1945. Things changed abruptly for the men. Instead of three ample meals a day, they were given two meals a day that averaged 1,570 calories… which is probably still more than I eat in a day, but we also have to factor in work - these men weren’t sitting around writing scripts and editing all day.
Breakfast was at 8:30, and dinner was at 5 pm. No meals or snacks in between. The other stuff was constant, though - they had their assigned jobs, they attended classes, and they needed to walk 22 miles every week.
Now because this experiment came about after all the European famines and whatnot, the meals were supposed to mirror what was commonly available - the men were given things like potatoes, cabbage, whole wheat bread... Not a lot of meat. There was water, black coffee, gum, and cigarettes available for whenever, at any quantity.
After a month on the starvation phase, subject Lester Flick wrote the following in his journal: “Wow! My clothes look sloppy! My belt buckle is in the last notch - a decrease of three notches since the starvation began.” So, losing weight as Dr. Keys anticipated, but at least his spirits were still up. But that was just after a month - there were five more months to go.
As the starvation phase continued, the men started to experience… troubling thoughts. One, Franklin Watkins, had a nightmare where he walked through the lab and saw a frail old man crumpled up against a wall. Watkins, again just in the dream, picked up the man’s skinny arm and started eating his flesh - so, dreams about cannibalism. I’m going to venture a guess here to say that most people don’t have dreams about eating other people, so this gives us an idea of how hungry these men must have become over the course of the experiment, and how desperate they felt about their access to food.
Watkins was one of the men who started cheating - in town, he’d buy and eat ice cream sundaes. He stole rutabagas from the kitchen and ate them in secret. His weight, therefore, did not drop as anticipated.
When Dr. Keys confronted him about cheating on his diet, Watkins confessed, and told Keys about his cannibalism dreams. For his part, Keys wasn’t too surprised to hear about the dreams, as he knew there was a link between famine and cannibalism. Watkins promised to stop, but he didn’t - he’d shoplift whenever he could, openly questioned the experiment in front of the others, tried to organize a strike with the others who were having a hard time like he was… but the other COs kinda just started avoiding him, as they still felt this was their noble way of serving. Watkins became more isolated and depressed.
Keys restricted Watkins from leaving the stadium lab, as it was clear that he would continue cheating on his diet otherwise. Watkins, in response, threatened to kill himself, then threatened to kill Dr. Keys. Keys wasn’t scared, only annoyed - Watkins was now a lost cause, and all that data was now useless. Keys had him transferred to the psych ward. After a few days of normal meals, the psychosis was gone, and Watkins left.
This, by the way, all started within a few weeks of starting the starvation phase. This wasn’t month six; this was month one. Halfway through, so around 3 months, is when Watkins completely broke. After Watkins was dismissed from the program, Keys called the remaining 35 men together and told them that they were no longer allowed to go out without a buddy - this included going to town, going to classes… if they were outside the stadium labs, they must be with an accountabilibuddy. And if that’s a new word for you… it’s a fun portmanteau of accountability and buddy.
The more common problems in the first half of the experiment were physical weakness and fatigue. Some of the men found they lacked the strength to do things that were simple before, like pushing the revolving door at the entrance to a local shop.
Keys, with his meticulous measurements, noted a 21% average reduction in strength. At around the halfway point, Keys decided to do the Harvard Fitness Test again.
In the control phase, most men displayed the same basic characteristics before collapsing - they would start pounding the treadmill more, they would start to sway, and start losing their feet on the ground. But now, the men would essentially just not be able to keep up, leaning forward until they face-planted. One subject, Sam Legg, performed pretty well during the control phase. But halfway through the starvation phase, he went from a solid 142 pounds to only 116 pounds. This fit Keys’ proposed weight loss curve, but still. On this first Harvard Fitness Test on the starvation phase, Sam only lasted a minute and a half before collapsing. Keys, with his measurements, noted a 55% decrease in fitness levels. In three months.
Also at this three-month mark, Keys noticed the men lost interest in things. First was dating - in fact, interest in women was the first thing to go. After that, the men were losing interest in the war abroad, something they had been tracking pretty seriously. This was also the time when the war in Europe had officially ended, but not the war with Japan, so there was certainly a lot of news going around. But with their intense starvation, the only thing the men thought about was food.
Sam Legg, the one I was just talking about with the Harvard Fitness Test, started to collect cookbooks. He’s read the recipes over and over again. In line for breakfast and dinners, he would guard his place jealously. Once, one of the serving women dropped a serving spoon, so she went to get another. You know, a small thing, takes 10 seconds to get a new spoon. No big deal. But Sam lost it - slamming his tray on the counter, cursing… it was clear that prolonged starvation wasn’t just causing physical deterioration, but mental and psychological deterioration too.
Keys noted that ambition, self-discipline, mental alertness, concentration, and comprehension had all dropped. Their morale was dropping, too. Keys didn’t want all of the men to end up like Watkins, so he organized a “morale booster” meal where he let his test subjects choose what foods they wanted to eat. Just for this one meal, though. He still measured out the calories, but the men were at least given a little agency over the things they were missing the most. For those of you interested, they chose:
Grapefruit juice
Bacon
Eggs
Bread with butter and honey
Milk
Fruit punch
Chicken
Stuffing
Potatoes
Gravy
Corn
Carrot salad
Strawberries
Biscuits (and we’re talking American-style ones that you might smother in sausage gravy, not cookies you eat with tea)
Celery
Peanut butter
Minced ham
Jelly roll
Oranges
Strawberry Shortcake
Thats… I mean I can see the roast chicken dinner with fixins, but grapefruit juice? Celery? Whatever. That meal ended up being 2,366 calories, compared to the average 1,570 they were getting before. The men enjoyed the meal - they laughed, they joked, they reminisced, they remembered the reasons why they put themselves through this in the first place… it was a welcome respite.
The next day, it was back to business.
But soon enough, another man had to be removed from the program. Though he did cheat on his diet once, this wasn’t the reason - he started to urinate blood. Keys had to drop him from the program, so now he was down to 34 test subjects. But to his credit, the man stayed to help in the kitchen, finding a way to still support the mission. He did start eating normally again, though, and all of his mental and physical ailments went away.
The next big challenge was edema. Many of the men started to experience weight loss plateaus, and this was because of edemas - areas where your body puffs and swells with water retention. The men were experiencing it on their legs and ankles, but also sometimes they would wake up with swelling on the side of their face that they slept on. Keys was expecting this; he knew that edemas were linked to starvation and famine. But it did start to mess with his data; though his subjects were still losing fat and tissue, the water retention meant they weren’t losing weight.
Nearing the end of the starvation period, Keys and his fellow scientists were struggling with how to keep up with weight loss while countering the edema. One man had been stuck at a plateau for two weeks, despite eating increasingly less food. It was a brutal decision, as the scientists had gotten to know these men over the last 9 months. Suddenly it wasn’t just cutting food from subject 108’s diet, but it was taking bread and potatoes away from Lester, who really, really loved his food.
On the final day of the starvation phase, the men were required to once again perform the Harvard Fitness Test. This time, though, the men were attached to safety straps, as the scientists knew they would likely collapse and hurt themselves. Sam Legg, who had experienced a 55% drop in fitness, only lasted 19 seconds this time. A far cry from the minute and a half from the previous attempt, and his time during the control period. It was measured to be a 91% total drop in his fitness levels - over six months. The average of the whole group was a 72% drop. It’s also worth mentioning that Sam Legg had dropped from an original 142 pounds when the experiment began to just 105.6 pounds.
Phase Three - Rehabilitation
On July 29th, the men entered the final three months of the experiment - the rehabilitation period. Though they weren’t immediately given all 3,200 calories back - it was restricted rehabilitation. In fact, the men were separated into four different groups - some were given an extra 400 calories, some 800 calories, some 1,200, and finally, some ate 1,600. The men didn’t know what group they were in, either. They were just given their allotted portion of food at breakfast and dinner.
Interestingly enough, in the early days of the rehabilitation period, the men were losing weight. This was actually because of the edema; as the body was healing from more calories, and in some cases protein supplements and vitamins depending on their recovery group, the edemas went away. The weight from fluid retention made them drop in overall pounds, but was still a sign of recovery and healing.
But after a prolonged period of starvation, the men were starting to show troubling symptoms.
Some experienced hair loss - it grew coarse and thin, and as they brushed it, it fell out in clumps.
19 of the remaining men developed dark patches under the eyes.
Some of the men’s fingernails and lips were turning blue, not unlike cyanosis, which victims of altitude sickness, or even cholera, can get.
Hair follicles were hardening too, giving the skin a weird texture; the scientists called it follicular hyperkeratosis, or the overproduction of keratin in hair follicles, which leads to rough bumps all over the skin.
Sam Legg had all of these symptoms.
Though they were in the rehabilitation period, they were all still struggling from a lack of nutrition. But then Sam had an idea - to quit would be cowardly, especially when they didn’t join the war effort.
But what if he was injured? If Sam could injure himself in a way that made it look accidental… maybe he would be cut from the program without the guilt and shame of quitting.
Sam and his accountabilibuddy often went to visit some friends outside of campus. To pass the time, and to not be around food, Sam took to chopping wood for their friends. He’d head out to a stump while they ate, gathered some logs, and cut them up with an axe. It was performing a service, it distracted him from food, and it was a way to pass the time on these outings.
Before this, Sam had tried crushing his hand. He jacked up his car and pretended to do maintenance on it, then pulled the pin on the jack so the car would drop and the tire could crush his hand. Surely with this accident he’d be dropped from the program honorably. But at the last minute, Sam pulled his hand away, and it only crushed the end of one finger.
But now, Sam was again fantasizing about being kicked out - surely a wood-chopping accident would do the trick? He raised the axe into the air, spread the fingers of his left hand out on the stump, and came down on them as hard as he could with his diminished strength. He managed to chop his three middle fingers off in one fell swoop before passing out.
For Keys, this was the moment he realized that perhaps this experiment was beyond the normal way of getting data - he realized that he was severely torturing these men with a lack of food.
And yet, as Keys visited Sam Legg in the hospital, Sam begged him to stay in the program. When Keys asked why he’d even want to, given everything he’d endured, and even chopping off his own fingers to escape, Legg told him, quote, “Doctor, for the rest of my life, people are going to ask me what I did during the war. This experiment is my chance to give an honorable answer to that question.”
The other subjects understood - to have come so far, it would be awful now to give up and have all of that hard work go to waste. Though Sam had clearly been having a mental break, when it was over, he didn’t want to quit or be kicked out. They didn’t want to invalidate their results, invalidate all their pain, invalidate all the starvation they endured.
Sam was released from the hospital after five days and came back to the stadium lab barracks.
Nearing the end of the experiment, Keys started to look closely at his data. He determined that vitamin and protein supplements made no real difference in recovery. What did make a difference was the amount of extra calories they were eating - each group recovered at rates proportional to whichever calorie recovery group they were in. So those only getting 400 extra calories a day were not recovering as quickly as those getting an extra 1,600 calories a day. Makes sense to me, but now there was data to back it up.
After 6 weeks, the results gave some more insight into recovery. Those in the lowest calorie group, those getting an extra 400 calories a day, had only recovered one-tenth of a pound in six weeks. Those in the highest recovery group, essentially eating double their starvation rations, had only gained back an average of 6.5 pounds, less than one-fifth of what they had lost. Keys reasoned it would take more than 3,000 calories a day to facilitate recovery, but he didn’t want to share his results until the study was officially complete.
But Keys and his other scientists sat down to chew on what they had learned - 400, 800, 1,200, and even 1,600 extra calories a day wasn’t helping with recovery. Keys bargained that the point of the experiment was not to learn how to starve people, but to learn how to rehabilitate those who were starving. So, Keys and his men decided to up their food rations.
The next day, September 9th, the test subjects had another “relief meal” like the one back in the early days of the starvation phase. The men gorged themselves and enjoyed a variety of new foods - not the normal carrot soups, wheat bread, turnip stews, or boiled potatoes they were used to. And after this glorious meal, Keys shared the news that they would all be bumped up by an additional 800 calories; the new groups would be 1,200, 1,600, 2,000, and 2,400 extra calories. It also meant a third meal would be added, so the men no longer had to endure a long stretch between dinner and breakfast the following morning.
Not only did they start to gain weight, but their mental health improved as well.
The men, fed up with the buddy system, drafted a manifesto that a majority signed and returned to Keys. Far from upset at what others might perceive as insubordination, Keys and his fellow scientists were happy - the men were returning to life. As Brozek, one of the other scientists, said to Keys, quote: “hungry people mindlessly follow orders. You feed them enough and right away they demand self-government.” End quote. But it wasn’t a slight on the test subjects - it was more tangible data that supported Dr. Keys’ ideas about how starvation affects people over a long period of time.
Keys abolished the buddy system on September 13th.
Nearing the end of the experiment, Keys and the other scientists repeated some of the tests they took at the beginning and during the starvation phase. One noticeable thing was that the results from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, the personality test that essentially measured mental health, were better than when they started. Curious.
The men had not regained all of their weight; the average started at 152.7, dropped to 115.6, and rose to only 129.2 pounds, which was only a little more than a third of what they had lost.
Those in the highest calorie group, which ended up being 2,400 extra calories, were still about 10 pounds shy of where they began 48 weeks prior.
A feast was planned for their last day together - the final meal. Scientists, staff, and test subjects sat together and celebrated this massive accomplishment - ethics aside, and remember this wasn’t considered highly unethical at the time, the men had set out to prove a point, and most of them made it to the end. The men ate heartily and happily, because finally, the experiment was officially over.
Aftereffects
Most of the test subjects left after the experiment ended, but 12 stuck around for more research. But this time, it was unrestricted rehabilitation. The men were allowed to consume whatever they wanted, and in whatever quantity - the scientists just wanted to periodically do tests to analyze the long-term effects of the study.
On average, the 12 who remained ate around 5,219 calories a day. Even when they stuffed themselves, they still said they felt hungry - these of course were more psychological symptoms than physical ones. They also noted an irrational fear of food being taken away from them at a moment’s notice (no surprise there) and would go through periods of uncontrolled binging.
One guy, in one day, consumed 11,500 calories. After 8 more weeks of unrestricted rehabilitation, they ended the experiment. There would be a few more follow-up appointments, but for all intents and purposes, it was over for these remaining 12.
Things changed pretty rapidly in the years after the starvation experiment ended. It took Dr. Keys about 5 years to get his results fully published, and by then, mass starvation in Europe was not as prevalent. The tables were also slowly turning against human experimentation with things like the Nuremberg Trials exposing Nazi cruelty, like Dr. Mengele and his sick experiments. The Helsinki Declaration, which came out later in 1964, also sought to protect human participants in medical research.
But though human experimentation by the Nazis was seen as awful, let’s not forget that the US was still doing things like this to its own people. Of the many many experiments that may shock you, the most well-known is the Tuskegee syphilis study, a 40-year experiment that took place between 1932-1972 that purposefully infected African-American males with syphilis, then studied the effects of syphilis on them until it killed them. Then they did autopsies. Oh, and these men weren’t told of what would happen to them. They were told lies about what the “treatments” were for. 128 men died, 40 wives were infected, and 19 children were born with syphilis.
Keys’ report, though it came out later than he planned, did help with studying anorexia. As Keys noted in his results, quote, “trying to make meaningful psychological changes with an anorexic patient in this starved state is analogous to trying to address underlying issues with an alcoholic patient who is intoxicated.” End quote. Meaning, there’s no point trying to study the psychological distress of an anorexic patient while they aren’t eating - food is the key.
Dr. Ancel Keys’ final takeaway from this experiment can be summed up in this quote, which comes from a speech he gave in Chicago. Quote:
“Enough food must be supplied to allow tissues destroyed during starvation to be rebuilt. Our experiments have shown that in an adult man, no appreciable rehabilitation can take place on a diet of 2,000 calories a day. The proper level is more like 4,000 calories for some months. The character of the rehabilitation diet is also important, but unless calories are abundant then extra proteins and minerals are of little value.” End quote.
So I guess one lesson to be learned from this is to eat food properly, or else you’ll start dreaming of cannibalism. At least that’s where MY brain went after all this!
Outro
Thanks for joining me for this episode of A Popular History of Unpopular Things. My name is Kelli Beard, and I hope you’ve enjoyed the story of the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. Thank you for supporting my podcast, and if you haven’t already checked out my other episodes, go have a listen!
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