And as the need to get thinner gets ever more urgent I’ll be asking who we can really trust to help us. Jacques Peretti, The Men Who Made Us Thin IV
The diet plate, diet soaps, diet lollypops … a magnetic fat-reducing ring … ibid.
K E Diet: You get liquid food through your nose, much of it protein. ibid.
Brazilians are falling in love with fast food and sugary drinks. ibid.
Nestlé have got a boat which delivers packaged food to people living alongside the Amazon. ibid.
More people in the world are overweight than undernourished. Obesity levels are rising. Jacques Peretti, The Men Who Made Us Fat I, BBC 2012
How business changed the shape of a nation. How the food industry itself choreographs temptation. ibid.
Two-thirds of British adults are overweight. ibid.
The food industry has changed the very nature of what we eat in the last forty years. ibid.
A Japanese scientist had invented a process that turns corn into a cheap sweetener. By the 1980s high fructose corn syrup would become the number one substitute for sugar. ibid.
Earl Butz transformed the American diet and ultimately its waistline. ibid.
Corn syrup: its greatest impact was when it was put into soft drinks. ibid.
In 1994 the figures showed a frightening increase in people’s weight at the very time that Corn syrup in America’s food and drinks had spiralled out of control. ibid.
Scientists are now beginning to think that there is something very specific about fructose which accelerates obesity. ibid.
Keys’ view of fat as the enemy [cf. Yudkin] became the orthodoxy. ibid.
The food industry denies that it exploits neuroscience. ibid.
The idea that certain foods can be addictive is highly controversial. ibid.
The food industry and the sugar lobby in particular brought its muscle to bear to bury the [McGovern] report. ibid.
Overnight a whole new type of food was invented: low fat. ibid.
SnackWell’s was a marketing triumph but a disaster for America’s waistline. ibid.
What they did in the ’70s was give us sweeter food and more of it. ibid.
Britain is in the grip of an obesity epidemic. Twenty-four million of us are now overweight, our appetites super-sized by big business. Jacques Peretti, The Men Who Made Us Fat II
The story of the men who trapped us into eating more. ibid.
Kid’s breakfast: weighs the same as a small child. ibid.
This over-consumption is killing us. More than 60% of men and women in Britain are overweight or obese. ibid.
So when did we all start over-eating? And who was it that decided we should eat bigger and bigger portions? The answer lies not in Britain but four thousand miles away across the Atlantic in America. Here in downtown Chicago is where the story of super-sizing began. ibid.
People loved the bigger popcorn buckets and taller drinks. Sales and profits soared. The super-size portion was born. ibid.
It was the arrival of McDonald’s in Britain that was to really transform the way Britons ate. ibid.
Across Britain the new counter-service restaurants offered faster food for a faster lifestyle. ibid.
McDonald’s didn’t want to bring in the value meal. ibid.
The value meal was rolled out globally. Within three years it accounted for almost half all meals sold. ibid.
More money on takeaways than on fresh fruit and vegetables. ibid.
Supermarkets: they are using super-sizing as a weapon in the price war. ibid.
They are offering calorie-rich foods at discount. ibid.
Back in the US, the land where super-sizing began, one in three people are obese, and still they keep eating. ibid.
There’s an obesity epidemic in Britain. And we think it’s all down to us eating too much fast food, processed ready meals and indulging deserts. But what if we are wrong? What if the food being sold to us as healthier is the very thing making us fat? Jacques Peretti, The Men Who Made Us Fat III
Welcome to the brave new world of shopping science. ibid.
Consumers get confused about what’s healthy and what is less fattening. ibid.
In 1992 John Major’s government was the first to grapple with obesity in this report: The Health of the Nation: A Strategy for Health in England presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Health. ibid.
In 1998 Procter & Gamble launched Sunny Delight. ibid.
By 1999 the organic business was worth over £600 million, more than doubling in two years. ibid.
By 2001 obesity had doubled in women and trebled in men, and it was rising. ibid.
The food industry – they have one priority and that is making money. ibid.
The food industry: why are governments so scared? ibid.
Britain’s diet industry is big business worth an estimated £2 billion a year. Yet, as a nation, we keep getting fatter. So what’s going wrong? Tonight: To Diet or Not to Diet? ITV 2014
Over 80% of us won’t stay the course. ibid.
50 years ago ... back then the average person weighed about three stone less than they do today. ibid.
Is dieting really the answer to losing weight in 2018? Tonight: Diets, New Year, New You? ITV 2018
Almost half of all Brits have tried to lose weight in the last year. ibid.
Does dieting work at all? … ‘99% of people who go on a diet purely end up not only failing in that but usually rebounding later.’ ibid. Professor Tim Spector
Fat burning pills … ‘No effect whatsoever.’ ibid.
Bulging Britain: Is the diet industry causing confusion? What advice should we follow? And how simple should it be to lose weight? … One in four Britons is now obese. Tonight: Fighting Fat: Back to Basics, ITV 2018
Which one [diet] do you choose? ibid.
America has now become the fattest nation in the world. Congratulations. Nearly one hundred million Americans are today either overweight or obese. That’s more than 60% of all US adults. Morgan Spurlock, Supersize Me, 2004
People were suing the golden arches for selling them food most of us know isn’t good for you to begin with. Yet each day one in four Americans visits a fast food restaurant. ibid.
They’re everywhere ... even hospitals. ibid.
What would happen if I ate nothing for McDonald’s for thirty days straight? Would I suddenly be on the fast track to becoming an obese American? Would it be unreasonably dangerous? Let’s find out. I’m ready. Supersize me. ibid.
There are more Micky D’s in Manhattan than anywhere else in the world. This tiny little island is less than 13 miles long by 2 miles wide – 22.4 square miles – and packed into that area are 83 McDonald’s, nearly 4 per square mile. ibid.
22 minutes later: I’m dying. ibid.
The toxic environment is constant access to cheap fat-laden foods. ibid.
McDonald’s stated in their own defence that, ‘It is a matter of common knowledge that any processing that its foods undergo serve to make them more harmful than unprocessed foods’. ibid.
Only half the McDonald’s in Manhattan had the nutrition info posted on the wall. ibid.
Houston, Texas, the fattest city in America. ibid.
Apparently, we are not only the fattest nation in the world, but we were quickly becoming the stupidest. ibid.
Even the salads contain sugar. ibid.
In only thirty days of eating nothing but McDonald’s I gained twenty-four and a half pounds, my liver turned to fat, and my cholestrerol shot up sixty-five points. ibid.
Some people even eat it every day ... Don Gorske has eaten 19,852 Big Macs. ibid.
More than half of America is on a diet. We are programmed to eat and it’s tough to fight millions of years of evolution. Now we’re overweight ... A haven for fad diets and their slick sexy ads are everywhere ... Quick and easy answers on how to lose weight. Penn & Teller, Bullshit! s1e11: Eat This, Showtime 2003
The so-called Hollywood Celebrity Diet! ibid.