In How hunger gnaws away at our human dignity, Dodie Bellamy reviews Sharman Apt Russell’s Hunger: An Unnatural History, which includes this historical tidbit:
Russell also revisits the notorious 1944 ‘Minnesota Experiment,’ headed by Dr. Ancel Keys (who developed K rations for the Army), which used Quakers and other conscientious objectors as ‘volunteers’ to lose 24 percent of their body weight. The experiment’s unsettling side effects included the rapid deterioration of each subject’s personality. Over months, cheerful men grew morose, flat, then bellicose, angry and just plain miserable. They weren’t allowed to eat food, so they went on shopping sprees instead, assembling junk-store collections of worthless tchotchkes, in a bizarre ritual of compensation.