This is damn interesting.

Headphones recommend it.

Starving for Answers

By Erica Nesvold

In early 1945, 36 American men lay in their bunks in a windowless room. Each man

alone with his thoughts as he tried to fall asleep despite the hunger that nodded his gut.

Just a few weeks earlier, they had all been fit, healthy young men eager to serve their country.

But then, their overseers had decreed that their rations were to be cut in half, and the men assigned

to feed them had shown no mercy. Now, they were so weak from hunger they could barely

roll over in their bunks. During the day, they tried to smile and laugh with each other to keep their spirits up,

but at night the depression that accompanied starvation seeped in, telling them to give in, to give up.

But the men soldiered on, despite the fact that they were not actually soldiers at all.

They were pacifists, who had volunteered to be starved for the sake of science.

In 1943, a year before the starvation study began, the USA was struggling through its second year of fighting in World War II.

But Dr. Ansel Key's career was thriving.

Not only had he accepted a position as head of the newly established laboratory of physiological hygiene at the University of Minnesota,

but his work was being funded by the deep pockets of the U.S. Army.

This support was thanks to Dr. Key's development of the infamous K-Ration, a pocket-sized packet of food containing 2,830 calories,

33 grams of protein, and most of the vitamins a soldier needed in a day.

Despite its unpopularity among soldiers due to its overuse,

Army officials had been so impressed with the K ration that they named Keyes a special assistant to the Secretary of War

and encouraged his research on the effects of nutrition and deprivation on the human body.

...