Lose Weight Eating Twinkies and Chips?

A professor of human nutrition tried a controversial new method of losing weight - the junk food diet - and actually lost 27 pounds.

Mark Haub, who teaches at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kan., told FoxNews.com he has lost the weight during a 2-month period where he consumed approximately 1,800 calories a day, through foods like Twinkies, candy bars and other assorted goodies that come out of the vending machine.

Haub has gotten a lot of attention from the media and critics who say he could be taking years off his life, but he didn't set out to create a new diet fad and capitalize on the buzz it created. In fact, when we talked to him earlier this morning on America's Newsroom, expressed his surprise as to how much public attention his experiment had generated.

Haub set out to prove it's all about reducing caloric intake - and not about the quality of the food that you eat. Now, taken out of context, some would say this was irresponsible or foolish for a nutrition expert to do because there could be serious health consequences in the long run. But if you look just purely at the point he was trying to make, I'd say he was a success. But there's a bigger lesson here.

Now, I'm the last person on earth that you should listen to with regard to diet, however, I'm serious when I say that if we don't take responsibility for our own diet, we're leaving ourselves open to the "food police" to start taking away our options. Banning sugary drinks and fattening foods won't necessarily make us healthier. What people need to remember is ultimately, your health depends on personal responsibility and our ability to make healthy choices.

For years, people that know more than I do about nutrition, have been telling us that the key to a balanced portfolio - calorie control, portion control, food quality control, and exercise - are the golden ticket for losing weight and maintaining health. There's no mystery to that, but many of us - myself included - have fallen short of balancing that portfolio.

This experiment clearly shows that if you control calories while eating unhealthy foods, like Twinkies, you can still lose weight. My only criticism is that it's a crappy diet because it doesn't provide you with all the nutrients you need. But, the excuse that many progressives use to mandate the elimination of choices just because they are bad for us, doesn't hold water in this experiment.

There's no need to traumatize children for reaching out for a Twinkie as though it was a marijuana cigarette. So kudos to Professor Haub for proving his point and opening up the discussion of smart dietary choices vs. results.