Hunger

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The writer is a scientific commentator

In the 1940s, with the spread of the war in Europe and abroad, the American physiological world realized that hunger would definitely follow, but this was not scientifically known for its effects. Ancel Keys, a professor at the University of Minnesota and his adviser to the American War Department, seized the opportunity to fill the gaps.

In 1944, along with psychologist Joseph Prozik, he recruited 36 healthy volunteers of male, ready to observe, measure, evaluate and evaluate because they were starving first and then feeding health. The study of the hunger of Minnesota has become a historical investigation of how severe nutritional deprivation affects the human body, mind and spirit.

Along with atrocities’ novels such as the famine of Bengal and Holocaust, the study informed the science of hunger that is still closely related today. A non -supported body that tracks food security on Tuesday said that “broad hunger, malnutrition and disease” leads the deaths related to hunger in Gaza, with the region on The brink of starvation. More than 20,000 children were treated due to acute malnutrition and at least 16 died.

KEYS volunteers, all of whom were conscientious opponents, responded to a war in wartime entitled: “Will you starve in their hunger that they are better feeding?” During the first three months, men, who lived in the Keys laboratory, ate about 3,200 calories a day. They had to walk 22 miles a week and keep a magazine. All the time, the keys measured their weight, size and strength; There were X -rays, mill sessions and blood samples, as well as intelligence and personal tests.

During the next six months, calories decreased by almost half and consisting of two meals per day of simple foods such as toast and potatoes. Men have lost about a quarter of body weight and 40 percent of muscle mass; They became weak, dialectical and introverted. They have suffered from dizziness, swollen ankles, anemia, hair loss, decreased sexual desire, skin and ringing changes in the ears; They felt cold, even in the summer, and they set out of the layers.

The heart rate and blood pressure decreased, and the idea challenge these characteristics was largely constant. They became obsessed with food (after the experiment, Keys mentioned, it became three chefs). Thirty -two men lasted 36.

The last three months have focused on calories renewal; The volunteers admitted that this challenge was almost similar. They found it difficult to organize appetite, with many eating until they vomit; Many fought with excessive eating after returning to normal life. The keys and the authors gathered their results in Human hunger biologyWhich was published in 1950 and is still martyred today because of its importance for eating disorders. When they were interviewed two decades ago, the volunteers in Minnesota insisted on the 18th of that they had no regret on their ordeal and did not believe that it had harmed them.

The keys to the problems I faced in treating hunger were frequented in the study of the prisoners of the Japanese war liberated in 1951; The fifth died after feeding. This phenomenon, which also appears in the Holocaust survivors, is known as “Nutrition Syndrome”: the sudden flow of nutrients can lead to a deadly fluid and electrolyte imbalance in a long -term body.

Many people who are starving are consumed less than half of the calories they need. When glucose is running out of normal meals, the hungry body will eventually turn, to surround fats and protein, including muscles. While we are evolutionary to hunger periods, prolonged hunger weakens tissues, such as the heart muscle, which keeps a person alive, and increases exposure to the disease.

Studies indicate that adults can survive without eating for two months as long as he drinks drinking water. Hunger is more disastrous for children, especially in the first 1000 days of life, as it impedes growth, brain development and immunity. Familiar famine harms the uterus: children born to mothers are more likely to develop obesity and diabetes.

KEYS, who died in 2004 years old and became more famous for designing army classes and connecting cholesterol to heart disease, has also made broader echoes of events today. A paper in the nutrition magazine indicates that he “emphasized the dramatic influence that had a famine on the mental and personal situation, and argued that democracy and building the nation will not be possible in a group of residents who were unable to reach enough food.”

While KEYS saw that hunger turns into healthy men into ghosts living in hope, he understood that hunger was a political issue, in addition to a scientific issue.