The purpose of the study was twofold: first, to produce a definitive treatise on the physical and psychological effects of prolonged, famine-like semi-starvation on healthy men, as well as subsequent effectiveness of dietary rehabilitation from this condition and, second, to use the scientific results produced to guide the Allied relief assistance to famine victims in Europe and Asia at the end of World War II.
Sexual interest was drastically reduced, and the volunteers showed signs of social withdrawal and isolation.
[2]: 123–124 Preliminary pamphlets containing key results from the Minnesota Starvation Experiment were used by aid workers in Europe and Asia in the months after WWII.
[2]: 183–184 In 1950, Ancel Keys and colleagues published the results in a two-volume, 1,385 page text entitled The Biology of Human Starvation (University of Minnesota Press).
Starting in 1941, he served as a special assistant to the U.S. Secretary of War and worked with the Army to develop rations for troops in combat, the K-rations.
Olaf Mickelsen, a biochemist with a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1939, was responsible for the chemical analyses conducted in the Laboratory of Physiological Hygiene during the Starvation Study, and the daily dietary regime of the CPS subjects—including the supervision of the kitchen and its staff.
Henry Longstreet Taylor, with a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1941, had the major responsibility of recruiting the 36 CPS volunteers and maintaining the morale of the participants and their involvement in the study.
During the study he collaborated with Austin Henschel in conducting the physical performance, respiration and postural tests.
Austin Henschel shared the responsibility of screening the CPS volunteers with Taylor for selection, had charge of the blood morphology, and scheduling all the tests and measurements of the subjects during the course of the study.
He joined the Laboratory of Physiological Hygiene at the University of Minnesota in 1941, where he served in a succession of positions over a 17-year period.
Availability of a sufficient number of healthy volunteers willing to subject themselves to the year-long invasion of privacy, nutritional deprivation, and physical and mental hardship was essential for the successful execution of the experiment.
[6] In early 1944, a recruitment brochure was drafted and distributed within the network of CPS work camps throughout the United States.
Taylor, Brožek, and Henschel from the Minnesota Laboratory of Physiological Hygiene traveled to the various CPS units to interview the potential candidates and administer physical and psychological tests to the volunteers.
Thirty-six men were ultimately selected who demonstrated evidence of the required mental and physical health, the ability to get along reasonably well within a group while enduring deprivation and hardship, and sufficient commitment to the relief and rehabilitation objectives of the investigation to complete the study.
[7] The 36 CPS participants in the Minnesota Starvation Experiment were: William Anderson, Harold Blickenstaff, Wendell Burrous, Edward Cowles, George Ebeling, Carlyle Frederick, Jasper Garner, Lester Glick, James Graham, Earl Heckman, Roscoe Hinkle, Max Kampelman, Sam Legg, Phillip Liljengren, Howard Lutz, Robert McCullagh, William McReynolds, Dan Miller, L. Wesley Miller, Richard Mundy, Daniel Peacock, James Plaugher, Woodrow Rainwater, Donald Sanders, Cedric (Henry) Scholberg, Charles Smith, William Stanton, Raymond Summers, Marshall Sutton, Kenneth Tuttle, Robert Villwock, William Wallace, Franklin Watkins, W. Earl Weygandt, Robert Wiloughby, and Gerald Wilsnack.
Throughout the duration of the study each man was assigned specific work tasks, was expected to walk 22 miles (35 km) each week and required to keep a personal diary.
[9] An extensive battery of tests was periodically administered, including the collection of metabolic and physical measurements; X-ray examinations; treadmill performance; and intelligence and psychological evaluation.
The study was divided into four distinct phases: During the starvation period, the subjects received two meals per day designed to induce the same level of nutritional stress for each participant.
The researchers tracked each subject's weight as a function of time elapsed since the beginning of the starvation period.
Preliminary pamphlets containing key results from the Minnesota Starvation Experiment were produced and used extensively by aid workers in Europe and Asia in the months after World War II.
The 50-chapter work contains an extensive analysis of the physiological and psychological data collected during the study, and a comprehensive literature review.
Two subjects were dismissed for failing to maintain the dietary restrictions imposed during the starvation phase of the experiment, and the data for two others were not used in the analysis of the results.
Among the conclusions from the study was the confirmation that prolonged semi-starvation produces significant increases in depression, hysteria and hypochondriasis as measured using the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.
Sexual interest was drastically reduced, and the volunteers showed signs of social withdrawal and isolation.
[2]: 123–124 The participants reported a decline in concentration, comprehension and judgment capabilities, although the standardized tests administered showed no actual signs of diminished capacity.
There were marked declines in physiological processes indicative of decreases in each subject's basal metabolic rate (the energy required by the body in a state of rest), reflected in reduced body temperature, respiration and heart rate.
[11] One of the crucial observations of the Minnesota Starvation Experiment discussed by a number of researchers in the nutritional sciences—including Ancel Keys—is that the physical effects of the induced semi-starvation during the study closely approximate the conditions experienced by people with a range of eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa.