What would be absolutely brilliant would be to have these folk study a Blueprint trainee, following them through the 5 day famine, re-introduction of protein and tripling of calories in the feast, etc..
Actually, similar studies have been done and they demonstrate the following:
(Am J Clin Nutr. 1996 Sep;64(3):259-66).
It was done for 3 weeks on men and women volunteers. They increased their calorie intake and it was observed that they had an increase in testosterone, IGF-1, and insulin. There were no changes in T4 or cortisol or adrenaline. There was an average of 4.3 kilograms of weight gained, with 46% of it being muscle. Note that these subjects did not weight train, yet still gained over 4 lbs of lean mass.
Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 49.4 (1989) : 608-611. Study done on 6 men who ate an excess in calories. They measured their fat and protein oxidation, but they also observed over 4lbs of muscle gained with only 2 lbs of fat gained. This study is even more substantial, since without weight training, they gained muscle 2:1 ratio.
J. Nutr. 109.3 (1979) : 363-377. This study is also done on 6 men over 10 days. These subjects were all given equal amounts of protein(1.2 grams/kg), but they were seperated into 3 groups; maintenance, 15% above maintenance, and 30% above maintenance. When increased and lowered, they found a correlation between the total intake of calories and Biological value and net protein utilization of the dietary protein.
None of these "high calorie" experiments were subsequent to short term protein deprivation/radical increase in workload "alarm" signaling we use in BP.
I'd lay good money the BP clinical results would be better than those observed above. The "average" results from overfeeding above yield about 4 lbs of LBM over 3 weeks with no weight training. I wouldn't expect this rate to remain linear for 3 more weeks though..
BP customers routinely add double that (Brain just tripled it at 12lbs and he dialed it back some!) within about 6 weeks, so our tweaks are making a difference