I am admittedly terrible at reading those studies - but am I correct in assuming that they really have no idea at all what the control group ate - and how much? Or did the last chart where they asked what the participants ate apply to both the intervention and control groups?

It's one thing to give the control group carte blanche on eating whatever they wanted during those 6 months - but it doesn't sound to me like they even asked them what they ate, as if it's completely immaterial, as long as they know what the intervention group ate.

Or perhaps because they weren't giving them any guidance and weren't giving them any food baskets, they just didn't care to include information they'd collected about what the control group ate in the results.