Ronald Reagan - Alice Roberts TV - Oliver Reed - Richard Wrangham - Penn & Teller TV - Mae West - The Weight of the Nation TV - Isaac Asimov - Rudy Liebel - Jean Kerr - Theodore Vanltallie - Horizon & Michael Mosley TV - Jacques Peretti TV - Welcome to the World of Weight Loss TV - Tonight TV - Will My Crash Diet Kill Me? TV - Fat Sick and Nearly Dead TV - Traci Mann - Telegraph online - Tom Colicchio - Adele - Maimonides - Dolly Parton - Lady Gaga - Peter Wheeler - Morgan Spurlock TV - Maianne Jean-Baptiste - Adam Smith - Fiona Phillips TV - Jim Davis - Christopher Hitchens - Laurence Sterne - George Carlin - The Catherine Tate Show TV - What the Health TV - Big Fat Lies About Diet & Exercise TV - Planet Dinosaur TV -
We were told 4 years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry every night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet. Ronald Reagan, TV speech 27th October 1964
The evidence of your diet is etched on to the surface of your teeth in the forms of scratches and pits. Dr Alice Roberts, Origins of Us 2/3: Guts, BBC 2011
We are specifically adapted to eating starchy foods. ibid.
Recent research suggests it was cooking, not meat, that fuelled the evolution of our big brains. It was cooking that made us human. ibid.
I’m only drinking white wine because I’m on a diet and I don’t eat. Oliver Reed
Cooking is huge. I think it’s arguably the biggest increase in the quality of the diet in the whole of the history of life. Professor Richard Wrangham, Harvard University
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.
Almost twenty-five thousand people a day die of hunger. ibid.
These Greenpeace dudes want us to believe that GE crops will ruin other crops and harm any animal or person that eats those foods. These extremists love to use bullshit propaganda ... It’s pretty easy to protest when you’re not hungry. ibid.
Norman Borlaug ... The greatest person that ever lived? At a time when doomsayers were hopping around saying that people were going to starve, Norman was working ... When he won the Noble Prize in 1970 they said he had saved a billion people ... Norman is the greatest human being. ibid.
All food is the product of technology ... Every food has been changed through selective breeding or grafting ... Why is anyone fighting food advance? ibid.
Colonics are not the only bullshit in tonight’s show. There is also bullshit diet. Penn & Teller, Bullshit s5e4: Detoxing, Showtime 2007
I never worry about diets. The only carrots that interest me are the number you get in a diamond. Mae West
Obesity is driving the epidemic of diabetes. The Weight of the Nation I, Sky Atlantic 2014
‘I love cheeseburgers’. The Weight of the Nation II: Choices fatties, 2014
Is there a right way to lose weight? ibid.
How can I save myself from diabetes? ibid.
The health impacts of obesity are screaming inside. The Weight of the Nation III, expert
Only 10% of parents seek medical help for their obese children. ibid.
More than 50% of Philadelphian school children shop at corner stores every day before and after school. The Weight of the Nation IV
Less than 3% of US farmland is planted with fruits and vegetables. ibid.
The first law of dietetics seems to be if it tastes good it’s bad for you. Isaac Asimov, 1920-1992
One of the remarkable aspects of body weight actually is how stable it is over relatively long periods of time. Dr Rudy Liebel
I feel about aeroplanes the way I feel about diets. It seems to me that they are wonderful things for other people to go on. Jean Kerr, The Snake Has All the Lines, 1958
In Science you’re not supposed to get angry, but why is someone recommending something that most of us know to be potentially harmful? The problem with the Atkins Diet is that it doesn’t grow out of scientific research. Atkins was out of his specialty. Dr Theodore Vanltallie, Columbia University
Hunger is always with us. From the dawn of time poverty has been the destiny of man. Horizon: Bread, BBC 1969
In 1967 a detailed investigation among five hundred patients from two general practices showed that half the population was more than 15% overweight. Horizon: Inside Every Fat Man, BBC 1969
The other important change that’s made us fat is lack of physical exercise. ibid.
The colon isn’t just a static tube. It contracts like an earthworm to force the food residue along. Painter believes that on a low-fibre diet this residue may be stiff like tar. (Diet & Food) Horizon: A Spoonful of Roughage, BBC 1975
Dr Walker has found that in rural Africans on traditional diets food passes much more quickly through the bowel than in urban whites. ibid.
People say to me I’ve got a slow metabolism ... We could show that rather than having a slow metabolic rate in fact it was even higher than the lean subjects ... This idea that overweight people have a slow metabolism is in fact a complete myth. Dr Susan Jebb, Horizon: Fat Cats, Thin Mice, BBC 1997
Phenfen took America by storm. Over six million prescriptions were issued in 1996. But by then something had already started to go wrong. ibid.
Unlike her twin sister she exercises regularly and is very health conscious. Sharon and Debbie are the prefect experiment. Carbon copies of each other they are living proof of the power of genes. Their separate environments have hardly influenced their weight. It seems they were born to be thin. Horizon: Born To Be Fat, BBC 1999
28-year-old Sven’s life is dominated by the drive to eat. He could literally eat himself to death. It’s not a question of willpower or choice no matter how much food he consumes he always feels hungry. For doctors, Sven demonstrates that there is some sort of hardwire switch that turns hunger on or off. ibid.
This top-secret research facility is where the war against obesity is being waged. Here millions of pounds are being poured into the hunt for a magic bullet. Horizon: Fatbusters, BBC 2002
The world’s most beautiful and famous have swallowed his advice. He wrote one of the biggest selling diet books of all time, and it was based on his extraordinary belief that you could eat as much as you desire and still lose weight. His name was Doctor Robert Atkins, author of the New Atkins Diet Revolution. Horizon: The Atkins Diet, BBC 2004
Does the Atkins’ diet really work and is it dangerous? ibid.
Science said that nowhere in the universe can calories go missing. ibid.
Medical Science hit back: there was a series of worrying studies. ibid.
Clues to the likely answer came from the world’s largest dieting study that took place in Britain ... When the researchers turned their attention to the Atkins-Diet’ diaries something intriguing began to emerge: the diaries showed that even though they could eat as much as they liked they were actually eating as few calories as the low-calorie dieters. ibid.
Appetite is now at the centre of modern obesity research. ibid.
When we start eating, we can’t stop. ibid.
The answer may have come from Denmark ... The study ran for a whole year. And the results were spectacular. When they looked more closely it was clear which group had lost so much weight: it was the group eating a diet high in protein. ibid.
The secret to the Diet’s success may be down to something completely different: protein makes you feel full. ibid.
The jury is still out on how it affects your health. ibid.