The Benedict weight loss study (1917)

Introduction

As promised last week, this week’s note reviews a classic study – the Francis Benedict study of metabolism from 1917. Benedict is credited as being the first person to study the impact of a calorie deficit in human beings. I have a photocopied PDF of Benedict’s study, from the University of Toronto library. The study was called “Human Vitality and efficiency under prolonged restricted diet.” The file is 754 pages long (64-bit file size). The study was conducted in 1917 and published in 1919 (Ref 1).

Interestingly, the study was undertaken in war time (as was the Ancel Keys Minnesota Starvation Experiment, which we reviewed last week (Ref 2)). War focused the minds of researchers on food rationing and the consequences of this. Benedict narrated “It would appear from ration cards and from the computations of the best hygenic and dietetic experts that the German civilian population were securing not more than 1,800 calories per man per day. The German army ration approximated 3,200 calories per day.”