Nutrition professor’s Twinkies diet is more Mini-Me than ‘Super Size Me’

News of the “Twinkies diet” is hard to swallow – especially amid all the recent angst about marketing fast food to kids. To top it off, the news comes from an unusual source.

[For the record, 2:35 p.m. Nov. 9: An earlier version of this post incorrectly said Mark Haub was a professor at the University of Kansas. He is from Kansas State University.]

Mark Haub, a nutrition professor at Kansas State University, went on a convenience store junk food diet of Twinkies, Nutty Bars, Little Debbies and other sweets to see whether weight loss was all about calorie counting, no matter the calories, CNN reports. In two months, Haub says he lost 27 pounds, lowered his body mass index and even lowered his level of “bad cholesterol.”

The results seem similar to those promised by a plethora of cookie diets. They operate on the same principle: eat cookies instead of meals. (Here’s a Los Angeles Times report on whether cookie diets work).

Of course, we’ll be looking for more on the Twinkies diet from SkinnyMyths.com, which prides itself in getting the skinny on fad diets. Here are celebrity diets that top the myth list, according to the website.