TV review: The Men Who Made Us Thin
Obesity? Ooh, don't talk to me about obesity. I'm so fat it's a wonder I can type this article. My podgy fingers are hammering away but I'm hitting four letters every time I try to hit one. Sdes frde sawq. See? It's a nightmare.
And it's tiring being so massively overweight for no apparent reason. I can barely lift this litre of full sugar Coca Cola without wanting a breather.
I'm so exhausted my McDonald's Big Mac and large fries are going cold.
I might have to put this evening snack into a blender so I can drink it.
Yes, it'll become a disgusting mixture of fat and sugar, but at least it'll save me ordering a milkshake.
Mind you, to do that I'll have to waddle into the kitchen, and I don't have the energy. Do me a favour and call an ambulance. Thanks. You're really nice, you are.
Well, all right, I'm exaggerating (although you are really nice).
However, I'm sad to say I'm definitely in the 60 per cent of us who are overweight.
Luckily, as Jacques Peretti 's grimly fascinating documentary showed, there is a whole army of people who want to help me in return for a lot of my money. Some of them even have qualifications and everything.
For example, I could try the KEN Diet, where instead of eating food I put a tube up my nose and pump protein straight into my stomach for 10 days.
I could buy a book by a man who has been fined $37m by The Man because of the claims he makes about the food industry.
Or I could go to Brazil and spend $20,000 having the fat sucked out.
Better book early though, because in a land where 100,000 people become obese every year, at least one doctor is doing this operation four times a day.
But what could be causing this rise in obesity? It's almost as if a global food industry which churns out cheap, processed food with questionable nutritional content, and then spends a fortune making it look glamorous, is in some way linked to exploding waistlines.
Nah, that's ridiculous. Like cigarettes being linked to cancer.
Peretti, who looks like a grown-up Tintin, certainly knows his facts, and his enviably trim figure is a testament to the quality of airline meals. In this episode alone he visited New York, London, Switzerland, Washington, Richmond in California, and Brazil.
And his findings were truly scary. I didn't know, for example, that when the new boss of Pepsi tried to make the company's products healthy, a dip in sales so panicked the shareholders they insisted it went back to flogging sugary drinks to the masses.
We learned about Oatso Simple, a 'healthy' porridge that contains 70 per cent oats and around 26 per cent sugar. The manufacturers say this is because of the fruit they use. I have my doubts.
And then there was Richmond, which tried to impose a tax on fattening sugary drinks, only to be met with the full force – and wallet – of the food industry.
The tax was rejected.
Obviously there are many factors causing obesity, but what we eat is definitely important. Judging by Peretti's documentary, don't be surprised if you see the big food firms on trial before too long.
Blimey, I could murder a Coke.
Andrew Owen
