From Revisionist History: The Starvation Experiment

close to my heart as a scientist experiments. In this episode, Malcolm dives into a particularly fascinating human challenge trial known as the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. It took place near the end of World War Two. In the trial, thirty six volunteers participated in a study designed to investigate the physical and psychological effects of starvation, along with the best way to refeed people after they've been malnourished for many months.

The goal was to help inform relief efforts during and after the war, but the study itself was really hard on the volunteers. As you can probably imagine, for an entire year, they lived on the campus at the University of Minnesota and ate only what the scientists allowed them to eat. The men lost a lot of weight, of course, but suffered many other effects, both physical and psychological, and yet most of them stuck it out for the full year.

These days, a human challenge trial like this would violate a ton of ethical guidelines, but many of the volunteers left a fascinating record behind in the form of oral histories. I found their stories fascinating, and I think you will too. Okay, here's our visionist history. Minneapolis, nineteen forty four. Busy sidewalks, miles of street car tracks, businessmen in gray suits and hats, shop girls in knee length skirts. The Mississippi snakes through

the middle of the city. The Fauchet Tower looms overhead. Overseas, the war in Europe and the South Pacific still rages. So many of the younger men are gone, but there is bustle and energy that makes the downtown feel like Chicago or New York City unless you look closely and pay attention day after day. And if you did that, you would see a strange sight that set Minneapolis in that moment apart. You would see men in groups of two walk in the streets early twenties, dressed identically in

khakis and white shirts. They would seem healthy at first, but then as the fall of nineteen forty four turns into the long winter and spring of nineteen forty five. You would see them start to change. You'd see them start to move slowly, as if they were old men. Their clothes are one, then two, then three sizes too big, eyes,

hollowed out, hair thinning, skin like parchment. They sit in restaurants and soda fountains and drink cup after cup of coffee, but never eat ever, even if you invited one of them to join your table, they just stare at your food with blank then move on, shuffling down the sidewalk across the Mississippi and back to a warn of rooms under the football stadium at the University of Minnesota. Back to the Department of Physiological Hygiene, run by a man

named Ansel Keys. What does he look like? Ansel Keys? He was short, you know, I think that bothered him a little bit. He was very muscular, He was very i think, very good looking in his youth. That's Sarah Tracy, a historian at the University of Oklahoma who's writing a biography of Ansel Keys. Do you know he was a child genius. He was one of lewis Terman's fifteen hundred gifted children whom he tracked. He was a termite. Yes, he was a termite. You know about the termite? I do,

I do. The termites were a group of children with super high IQs. You had to be very smart to be a termite. He was very self possessed as a child. You know, if he set his mind to doing something, he did it. He left high school three times, once to become a powder monkey in some mines gold mines, wants to become a lumberjack and wants to collect bat guano from caves in Arizona and so. Keys was America's

first true celebrity doctor, a mountain climber, an adventurer. He was on the cover of Time back when that was the real measure of celebrity. He wrote best selling cookbooks with his wife. He had a fabulous villainear Naples. The Army has developed a now famous k Ration, the completely streamlined meal. Back before the Second World War, the Army came to him and asked him to make a high calorie preprepared meal. It was called the k Ration K for Keys, of course, and millions of gis ended up

carrying his creation into battle. Originally designed for para truths K proved ideal for tank busters, commandos and all isolated units. Each package contains a balanced by them rich meal. With the K ration under his belt, An sol Keys then turned his attention to an even bigger question, one that had long obsessed those who study human physiology. What happens to people when, from months on end you deny them food. My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History,

my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This episode is about an audacious experiment conducted at the end of the Second World War by one of the most remarkable figures in twentieth century signs An sol Keys so verses at the tape, if you could just state your name and the location and date of your birth. This is Earl Heckman, living at eight eight eight had a line drive in elves in Illinois, and I was born on December one,

nineteen eighteen. The best record we have of what exactly happened in ansel Kes's laboratory is in a box of taped interviews stored away in the archives of the Library of Congress. Each tape runs roughly two hours in length. They contained the recollections of eighteen of ansel Kes's subjects who sat down in their eighties to leave a permanent record of their experience. My name is Sam leg I was born in Hackensack, New Jersey, on November tenth, nineteen sixteen.

Max Campbell Men with an M in the middle initial and November seventh, nineteen twenty. The interviews were conducted by two researchers from Johns Hopkins University, Richard Semba and Leah. The tapes were given to the library shortly thereafter, where they have sat on a shelf ever since, untouched, a forgotten record of eighteen voices talking about an experience none of them will ever forget. It was known as the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. We were in Stadium South Tower, the

football stadium. Underneath the stadium had quite a complex for research there, and there was a We lived in a dormitory there. All the activities at the university were open to us. During their off hours, the men would roam the city. People living near the university saw them all the time, young men in white shirts and khaki pants, taking long walks along the Mississippi, sitting in restaurants drinking coffee, but never eating a thing. The men called themselves the

guinea pigs. We were all in excellent physical health, and as far as as far as they knew, we were all in good metal health at the time. We did not stay that way during the experiment, but we were. You can go to the Library of Congress and listen to the tapes in the reading room yourself if you like. You might end up wondering what was ansel Keys trying to accomplish by putting his subjects through so much? And

was it worth it? When I hear somebody say, oh, I'm simply starved, I know they don't know what they're saying, because there's a real difference between what your body craves for from the zur result of starvation than what you normally feel as hunger. The second episode of this season of Provision's history was devoted in large part to the story of the famous iodine experiments in Akron, Ohio during

the First World War. A doctor named David Marine was trying to figure out how to treat goiter, a condition that causes severe enlargement of the thyroid gland. Goiter was widespread in the early part of the twentieth century millions of people walked around with baseball sized bulges on their necks.

Marine wanted to see if regular doses of iodine could solve the problem, so he convinced the Akrone school board to let him run a study on thousands of schoolgirls feeding them regular doses of iodine to see if it prevented goiter. Could that experiment, I wondered, be conducted today. I called up the bioethicist Art Kaplan, who teaches at

New York University today. To attempt this experiment to prevent goiter would be a usually different experience for that researcher and for the subjects, the school board and their families. For one thing, when that experiment was done, there were no federal regulations. There was no federal overs of what was going on. These days, most experiments involving human subjects are closely regulated. They involve consent forms, disclosure statements, the right to drop out of a study at any given time.

Kaplan's point was that, compared to today, medical research in the past starts to look like the Wild West. If you could find the money and talk people into participating,

off you went. In Alabama between the nineteen thirties, and the nineteen seventies, the Public Health Service launched the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, where a group of African American men were tricked into signing up for what they thought was medical treatment, when in fact, all the researchers wanted to do was to find out what happened when you let untreated syphilis run its course. It was maybe the lowest moment in

twentieth century American medicine. In early nineteen sixties, the Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram ran his infamous Obedient and Study two eighty five volts, where Milgram deceived otherwise unsuspecting subjects into thinking that they were delivering high voltage electric shocks to someone they'd never met. I absolutely repairs to answer anymore. Cut me out of me. You can't all reader, cut

the out met the next words green place. In today's era, the number one consideration in any proposed experiment is its effect on the subject. Back then, the number one consideration was the value of what you could learn from the subject. The subject was thought of like a soldier in battle, someone whose well being was secondary to the larger cause. The answer to the vitamin question is not pill, but good food. In plenty of variety. According to doctor Key,

the vitamins were missing from his food. A soldier might have to take concentrated vitamins. If he had vitamins but no food, he was still are The best way, naturally is the supply vitamins of the food. Now, remember the stature of Ansal Keys has attained during the Second World War. He's the world's greatest nutrition researcher. He's closely involved with the war effort. He just developed the k ration to great acclaim, and he looks around the world and he

sees millions of people suffering from severe malnutrition. The war disrupted the food supply of entire continents. Millions of people were in concentration camps, reduced to skeletons. Ansal Keys knew how little his field understood about prolonged malnutrition. What was the effect of long term hunger on physical wellbeing, un psychological health, and what was the best way to bring the undernurshed back to health. What was more important how

much you've fed someone or what you've fed someone. So Keys designs an experiment. He would need thirty subjects for at least a year. The first three months would be the control period. Each research subject would be stabilized at what Keys estimated to be their correct weight, three full meals a day intake matching outtake. Then after stabilization would come six months of severe calorie restriction, with the goal that each man losed twenty five percent of his ideal weight.

Exercise would be mandatory throughout the study, twenty two miles a week of walking up and down the Mississippi or through downtown Minneapolis, all through the long Minnesota winter and through the following summer. Each participant tested on a regular basis blood samples, sperm samples, body fat, blood volumes. The men would be asked to keep journals and record their thoughts and dreams, and then, after six months of starvation,

three months of recovery. The crucial part. Keys planned to test out different rehabilitatian diets with varying amounts of calories, protein, and vitamins. The experiment begins on November nineteenth, nineteen forty four. Keys gathers his guinea pigs at the Laboratory of Physiological Hygiene underneath the football stadium. He stands in front of all thirty six and gives them a speech. He had stayed up the previous night, practicing in front of his wife. Quote.

We are here because of the problem of relief feeding in general, and particularly in the war devastated areas. Today, you can imagine a moment keys the brilliant scientist bringing the group of young men before him under his spell. 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. Grand words tailor made for men of idealism, eager for a chance to serve their country.

And then are you ready to begin? And a deafening cheer goes up. When we started this experiment, we were all given the same amount of proof. Right. Listening to the oral histories from the veterans of the Minnesota starvation experiment is a strange experience. We had six slices of bread for they take away two slices and four slices, six slices, and we still didn't lose weight. Then they started taking away your potato. The men are all at

the end of their lives. Nearly sixty years have passed since the experiment ended, But rarely do any of them say, I don't remember or I don't know. They know, and they remember, and their memories are precise. In fact, it seems like they've been reliving the long year between the fall of nineteen forty four and the fall of nineteen forty five ever since. Do you remember what your lowest weight got down to? One hundred and thirty four? I believe what was sort of your standard weight entering one.

I went in at two twenty, and they they standardized me down to one eighty before they really experiment began, So I got down to one thirty four. The thirty six subjects started the experiment with high hopes. Keys had arranged for them to take classes at the university. The men themselves organized dramatic productions and planned to hold educational seminars. Many wanted to prepare themselves for relief work after the

war was over. In the recruitment leaflet Keys sent out, he mentioned the intriguing possibilities in the fact that there was an all women's dormitory nearby for those, as he put it, who wanted to be a guinea pig by day and a wolf by night. What happened after once the semi servation started, things went downhill very fast. Well, not real fast. It didn't seem much change at first. But when we got down to the to the place

where we really knew what the word hunger meant. Instead of just saying I'm hungry, let's go eat, which isn't the word hunger, I mean, it's a different different when we really felt pangs of hunger, and we'd begin thinking about food most of the time, and so forth, we began to be more and more irritable. After the three months of initial rigor, while they stabilize their weight, the

severe calorie restrictions kicked in. Everyone now got just two meals a day cabbage, potatoes, bread slices, Ruda Vegas, and occasional treats of macaroni and cheese. I was one of the few, now I shouldn't say few, but I was one of the many that metally was transfixed on cookbooks, and I collected probably one hundred cooks books. I would

read cookbooks like he would read readers digest. Some of the men would walk into Minneapolis, sit in restaurants and watch other people eat the way they might have once gone to a concert or watched a play. They dreamt about food, They argued about food, at meal times, they fixated on their plates. I mean we would lick the plates, and I remember I heard that caused a bit of that caused a bit of tention. I think it did, particularly evening, for instance, one of the first that I

saw doing that, and I thought, that's disgusting. I'm pretty sCOD. I were doing it myself, so oh yeah, I mean I just thought, this is that you would actually degrade yourself to the extender looking up plate, give me a break, and that pretty soon we were all looking it. Coffee was one of the few indulgences they were allowed, so they drank it to excess, twelve eighteen cups a day.

They chewed enormous amounts of bubblegum. They began souping their meals, their word for adding water to everything they were given to create the sense that their portions were bigger. One of the men took a day to see to have and have not, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. I'm sorry, Slim, but I still say you're awfu good. And I wouldn't, oh, I forgot. You wouldn't take anything from anybody, would you.

That's right. One of the great romantic dramas of the warriors, but he couldn't concentrate except for the part where Bogart goes to a restaurant. And if you went to a movie, you weren't particularly interested in a lot of scenes, but you noticed every time they ate and what they ate. During the long starvation phase, Keys began to lose some of his subjects. One of them went walking through down to Minneapolis, and suddenly his resolve broke. He'd been having

dreams of cannibalism. He went into seventeen different soda fountains and gulped down a milkshake at each one. After that, we could not go out without a buddy, And if we had a girl friend, we could bring the girlfriend and the doctors would interview the girl and goal care so when we were on a date, she'd be your buddy. Finally, after six months of starvation recovery, on the final day, when you were able to finally break, what, do you remember what you did? Yes, they did a big breakfast

for us, and that most of us stuffed ourselves. And then I think I went downtown and one restaurant and went in in another meal, and then got out and went and another one and and just I mean, one couldn't satisfy your craving for food by filling up your stomach.

Many of us, I think did unreasonable things. I was invited out for him, I think a Swiss State dinner, and though I was filled to the brim, I went and stuffed a little bit more on in on top, and then got on a bus riding back to the to the stadium and Jos filling up and down on all of a sudden I lost it all. Oh no, I got off at the next so I felt sorry for the guy that was going to have to clean

it up. Then I didn't stay around. In nineteen fifty five, years after the study ended, Keys published The Biology of Human Starvation, his landmark two volume account of what was learned during the study. To this day, that book helps doctors understand everything from famine relief to eating disorders. If you've ever used the terms metabolism, intermittent fasting, calories in, and calories out, then you're talking about concepts that go

back to the Keys experiment. Ancil Keys did exactly what he set out to do, but his subjects, they were soldiers in a battle whose well being was secondary to the large cause. Years later, the subjects of the starvation experiment gathered for a reunion. Ansel Keys, by then an old man, addressed the group. Someone asked him did he think the benefits of what was learned were greater than the costs of what the men went through? He looked out at all the men in front of him and said, well,

you're all here, aren't you. Out Of all the interviews in the box of tapes at the Library of Congress, one stands out the testimony of a man named Sam Legg. His father was a stockbroker in New York City. Sam went to the elite Saint Paul's private school in New Hampshire and then on to Yale. Sam Legg was someone the other guinea pigs looked up to, that is until his behavior took a sharp turn during the six month starvation period. His mooths began to swing back and forth.

Like many others, he got obsessed with cookbooks. But his obsession was pronounced. He took to eating in the corner by himself. The historian Todd Tucker interviewed leg for his book The Great Starvation Experiment. He writes about the way Legs started to eat he combined all the food on his tray into one pile. He then took his fork and stirred it and mashed it all together, the thimblefuls of fish, chowder, spaghetti, peas, and potatoes, until it was

a homogeneous, dark gray greenish paste on his plate. He then salted and peppered the amalgamation until it was crusted with seasoning. When he had scraped every morsel off his plate, he then picked it up and licked it noisily until not a molecule of food remained. The slurping noise was so loud it made the other men WinCE. In his Oral History interview, Mike talks about it how during the starvation phase he felt his character start to slip away.

I'll tell you a nasty moment. I was walking along and I obviously had a buddy, but I don't know who it was. And it was deep into the semi starvation, and we were tired. When they crossed the street, they didn't have the energy to take the half step up onto the sidewalk. We were tired and weak, and so we were standing at a corner waiting for a light or something, and a kid came along on a bicycle and he was really moving, pumping away, and I said, I wonder where he's going. And then I said ted

to myself, I know where he's going. He's going home for supper, and I'm not. And then, for a very brief I hope it was brief moment, I suddenly hated that that boy, and that I hate at this point to tell you this because it doesn't speak very well for me, but I have remembered it with I guess horror that that I could feel such a thing so utterly irrational, But there was, and you ask an experience that I remember. I sure remember that the interview is

almost over, Just one final question. There anything that we haven't talked about, or that I should have asked you, or you'd like to add that seem Elivan. You should have asked me why I'm missing fingers on my left hand. Okay. I keep saying to myself that this was because I was so weak and I was chopping wood and I got the act caught up in a tree and I didn't have an rapid enough reaction time to pull my

hand away, so I removed some fingers. He was at the house of two elderly ladies in Minneapolis who had befriended some of the subjects. Leg and his buddy, We're going watch the women eat, then go outside to split wood to steal themselves against the temptation to take any of the women's food. I recognize that a human being can go through a period of mental illness. I think I was mentally ill. Was I mentally ill at the time that I removed the fingers? I don't know. I

like to think that I wasn't. I like to think it was an act to that. I'm not gonna sit here and canagarically say that I didn't do it on purpose. Leg was rushed to the hospital. Pencil Keys heard the news and came straight to his bedside. Leg looked like a concentration camp survivor. His eyes had changed color, a strange side effect of deprivation that was common among the men. His corneas were a hard, brilliant white, the color of gleaming teeth. His skin was like flaky tree bark. His

hand was a bloody mess. I'm quoting now from Tucker's account. Is there anything I can do for you, Sam asked Doctor Keys. Yes, said Sam. Keys leaned closer to here. Keep being the experiment, he said, Sam, I'm afraid I can't keep you in, said Keys, You need rest and decent meals. The two of them went back and forth, and Leg said, Doctor, he said, his voice still hoarse and quiet, 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. Que And so for the next five days, until Leg was released from the hospital, they brought him his meals from the laboratory kitchen in a cardboard take up box, because of course he couldn't eat the hospital food that would be cheating. Could answer, Keys, do that experiment today? I asked the ethosist Art Caplain about Keys's experiment.

Caplin knew the story well. He taught for years at the University of Minnesota, putting people on starvation diets, having them run around a city Minneapolis, being confronted with food everywhere, having them stressed out. Not a chance. The Minnesota starvation experiment, or any experiment like it, could never be repeated today. In the next episode of Revisionist History, we ask, are

we sure that's a good thing? Revisionist History is produced by Eloise Linton, Leeming, Gustu and Jacob Smith with Tali Emlyn and Harrison VJ. Choi. Our editor is Julia Barton. Our executive producer is Milo Bell. Original scoring by Luis Gara, mastering by Flawn Williams, and engineering by Nina Lawrence. Beth Johnson is our fact checker. Special thanks to Todd Tucker go read his book The Great Starvation Experiment, Ansel Keys and The Men Who Starve for Science Special. Thanks also

du Ariella Markowitz for production help on this episode. I'm Malcolm Glauber.