Whether we like it or not GM crops are part of what we eat. Horizon: Jimmy’s GM Food Fight, BBC 2008
Cooked food lights up all our senses. The smell, the sight, the touch and of course the taste are amongst the great pleasures of existence. Horizon: Did Cooking Make Us Human? BBC 2010
We all have our favourite food. It’s a feast for the eyes, a temptation for the nose, and pure pleasure for the mouth. But it might be that what we eat has done much more to make us what we are than anyone could possibly imagine. What is on our plate is the most direct link we have to our ancestors. ibid.
Could eating meat really have caused us to evolve? ibid.
Could cooking really have caused us to evolve? ibid.
The human ability to cook gives us a massive advantage over all other animals. ibid.
As a nation we are slowly but surely getting fatter. We’re all eating well, maybe too well. Gabriel Weston, Horizon: The Truth About Fat, BBC 2012
What is it about this epidemic that operates so randomly? ibid.
It’s the fatty calorie-rich foods we love the most. ibid.
Nearly a quarter of the adult population is clinically obese. ibid.
They discovered two new hormones – Ghrelin and PYY – that together seem to control appetite and weight. ibid.
I’m pretty shocked to discover that my assumption of a lifetime which is that I’m the size I am because of my character is nonsense. ibid.
What was making these twins so different in weight? ibid.
Professor Spector: Stress can create parallel but different strategies. ibid.
The biggest single factor causing a child to be fat was the nine months it spent in its mother’s womb. ibid.
A new set of answers is emerging which could help us to defeat what to me is one of the defining epidemics of our age. ibid.
I wanted to see if Science can offer a different way to stop the rot, slow the clock. Professor Michael Mosley, Horizon: Eat, Fast and Live Longer, BBC 2012
It’s all a question of what you eat, or rather what you don’t eat. It’s about fasting. But fasting made easier. ibid.
It seems it’s not just about what we eat but how and when we eat it. ibid.
Only now are scientists really beginning to understand the link between calorie restriction and longevity in humans. ibid.
Hunger really does make you sharper. ibid.
That doesn’t mean intermittent fasting will work for everyone. ibid.
I plan to go on doing it. ibid.
What we eat plays a part as well. Horizon: Curing Alzheimer’s, BBC 2016
Britain is in the grip of an obesity epidemic. We can’t seem to stop eating and we are getting fatter. Dr Giles Yeo, Horizon: Who Are We Getting So Fat? BBC 2016
Obesity is conceived as quite a simple problem … ‘Our urge to eat … is a product of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.’ ibid.
These high sugar levels flow across the placenta. ibid.
Imagine if the food you choose could clean your body and make you feel well … Clean is a totally new approach to food driven by social media. Horizon: Clean Eating – The Dirty Truth, BBC 2017
Can we really eat ourself well? ibid.
Cutting out one food stuff we’ve eaten for millennia: Gluten. ibid.
The China Study has sold two million copies. 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, BBC 2012
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, BBC 2012
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.
It is the parents who have to take responsibility for what their children eat. McDonald’s corporation
Be careful about what you eat because otherwise you get fat! Do you like to be fat? Eat very, very, very little things. Almost starve, but I don’t starve, because I eat very much. Sophia Loren
To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day. W Somerset Maugham