TV review: Something awful to dine out on

UNPALATABLE TRUTH: Jamie Oliver and his team in The Big Food Fight: Jamie's Eat To Save Your Life spill the beans about the ugly side of food.

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Some viewers might be sick of Jamie Oliver, others might wonder what gives him the right to set himself up as Britain's unofficial food tsar and mentor to young delinquents.

A few diehards might even wish he'd just cut the cackle and get back to cooking yummy food on the telly.

But there's no denying he's on the side of the angels with his latest opus, a series designed to rub our troughing noses in the unpalatable truth behind our eating habits: The Big Food Fight.

There's no doubt we're all eating a lot of stuff we shouldn't be eating, wouldn't be eating if we knew its provenance, and mightn't even consider to be food if we thought about it too hard.

Last week's Fowl Dinners (TV One Tuesday) surely left no viewer in any doubt that:

A. Most chooks are farmed and eggs produced in a hideously cruel manner.

B. Even if you're inured to animals' suffering, you really wouldn't want to be eating stuff that had been produced in such execrable, literally, conditions.

This Tuesday's Eat to Save Your Life was less hard-hitting, despite the deadpanly creepy Dr Gunther von Hagens freezing and dissecting real human corpses for us to go "Oooh" over.

The basic message, that we're eating life-threatening quantities of fat, salt and sugar, is hardly news, at least not in this country, where we have come to expect that one day our superprotective government will bring in a fat tax against such food evils.

Even closeups of clogged arteries, colonic polyps and fat-larded livers are strangely routine after the past decade's avalanche of documentaries on extreme fatties, and of downsize-me programmes.

But if you think about it in the British context, specially having watched Jamie's School Dinners, you appreciate that for many English folk this is ground-breaking stuff.

Unlike our children, British youngsters eat lunch provided by school kitchens - typically lardy chips and deep-fried reconstituted "meat" products, stodgy, chemical puddings and hardly a fruit or vege for weeks on end.

They do not, like us, have a virtuous mainstream uptake of Vogel's. The school dinner kind of food is so far normalised into daily living that the English grow up used to a killer diet, and it's a revelation to many of them that such a common eating practice is so bad.

Oliver doesn't just lecture us, however, but tries to put a historical context to our dietary habits. For instance, we used to cook from scratch many decades ago, and though it was labour-intensive, that was when women tended not to work.

The food was fresh so it needed little in the way of salt, sugar or fat.

But then came technology, which enabled us to get more and more food in a ready-to-eat state, and keep it in the freezer or cupboard indefinitely.

The microwave catapulted us even further from the from-scratch days.

But at the same time, the need to add fat, salt and sugar to make food more palatable grew because chemically preserved or frozen tucker doesn't retain the same flavour as fresh.

Oliver pointed out, somewhat horrifyingly, that even fruit and vegetables have been bred to contain higher and higher sugar content so a carrot today is much sweeter than, say, one from the 1950s.

Oliver's romp through good, easy and fast food to mitigate against the bad was useful. He whipped up a two-minute tomato sauce, and much fuss was made of the heroic properties of canned baked beans.

But it would have reinforced the message better if he had supplied a raft of super-quick, appetising recipes. Let's hope that's for another Jamie Oliver special, though anyone vaguely motivated can find recipes online.

What would also be good is a followup next year using the game group of mostly portly Poms who volunteered to come on the programme and subject themselves to embarrassing physical tests, and admit to their sins by keeping honest food diaries.

They all seemed badly rattled by Oliver's patter - one middle-aged woman was moved to tears at the statistical projection that she might live only seven more years - and all vowed to change. Whether they will would be worth checking up on.

Inevitably, unwanted and not entirely useful gross images will stick with the viewer long after the show.

Dr von Hagens' cross-section of a constipated bowel was pretty bad - and that from a slew of sick- making exhibits. The good doctor's speciality is freezing dead bodies, and slicing cross-sections out of them so we can compare and contrast.

Would you yield a fat or lean slice if you donated your body to science? It's a motivation of sorts.

Then there was the poo pile: a volumic representation of five years' worth of excreta from one of the hapless panelists - barely a trailer-full - with that of the average Ugandan - enough to fill a swimming pool.

It's not often a poor, downtrodden Ugandan is held up as being more fortunate than us, but when it comes to ingesting health-promoting fibre, poverty and oppression have useful spinoffs, apparently.

* What did you think? Post your comments below.

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Kimberley   #9   05:26 pm Jan 28 2009

I watched both of these shows (not realising it was a series) and am glad I did. I don't think they were supposed to be the 'be all and end all' of nutritional info, rather a layout of manageable facts for Regular Joe (in the studio and at home). I did feel a twinge of guilt as I remembered the frozen chook in my freezer, but I think the main point of the exercise was to prompt thoughtful consumer choices in the future - something I'll surely be keeping in mind when I next do my shopping.

If we're picking our 'most shocking', I'd say that the thing that shocked me the most was the 24 year old who died of heart failure. 24! However the most disgusting was the lard-laden goose liver. Foix gras a delicacy? Amongst frozen slices of people, it was this that made me gag!

Petra   #8   05:26 pm Jan 28 2009

I thought that dissection was great! I wish we had more of that sort of thing on the TV. Perhaps you have blood-injury-injection phobia? This is accompanied by disgust, light-headedness and fainting at the sight or even talk of blood, cutting, guts etc. :)

Freya   #7   05:26 pm Jan 28 2009

Lyn, if you're going to make an epic post, for the love of god please spell and grammar check it. Your use of commas and paragraphs is hideously difficult to read through.

Marie   #6   05:26 pm Jan 28 2009

I think the fact that Jamie Oliver is trying to raise awareness to what we eat and what really happens to our food before it gets on the shelves of supermarkets is really great. however the Dissection of a real human corpse was both shocking and vile - I don't think that was suitable for TV at all. Frankly I was horrified at what I saw and had to turn the tv off. That was unnecessary to show such gore. It would have been more suitable shown to medical students rather than public viewing. What is the world coming to!

Vic D   #5   05:26 pm Jan 28 2009

I only saw about 30 minutes of the show but loved it! Good for Jamie. I especially like that fact that the 'skinny' 23year old had a very high % of body fat. Stop kidding yourselfs about the rubbish we eat. NZers are fatties!

If you can't run for a mile your probably eating yourself to death, and just plain lazy.

Can't wait for the next show, if this is one?

Anna   #4   05:26 pm Jan 28 2009

I work in a health unit and my boss saw this on TV. She spent about 20 minutes telling those who didn't see it about it. She was impressed although found it a little gory she said that it was powerful and good to see and that it really makes you stop and think.

It was enough for me to read this article and I wish I saw the show!!

PK   #3   05:26 pm Jan 28 2009

Great series so far. This kind of reality will change some peoples lives for the better. They will be fitter and healthier due to Jamie's 'REAL' food show. The problem of obesity and unhealthy living is tackled head on. Love him or loath him, he makes a point and gets people thinking about their health and the health of the nation as a whole. Well done Jamie!

Lyn Charlton N.D   #2   05:26 pm Jan 28 2009

I believe, Jamie is to be applauded for his sincere desire to effect change in the nations eating habits .However, unfortunately, he has been lacking in his research. for a healthy diet and used a 'nutritionist' who followed the 'party line, Information ,in the media, is funded and controlled by the food industry and is seriously flawed. This is especialy true, with regards to healthy fats. One small example; butter consuption has plummeted and heart disease, { first seen at the beginning of the 20th century,}obesity and cancer have soared. Traditional people throughout the world maintained excellent health eating the very foods we are told to shun today.As a naturopath ,I have studied health and nutrition for over 40 years and believe there is no better place to look for ,anthropologically proven, nutritional information than ''Nutrtition and Physical Degeneration '', by Dr Weston.A.Price. This book has never been out of print since the 1930s and a revised edition can be purchased from The Price,Pottinger Foundation. if you are genuinely interested in great health and great food. I highly recommend this book.

A Nonny Moose   #1   05:26 pm Jan 28 2009

People just don't like their bums being smacked - good on Jamie for doing so. More power to him.

What really stuck with me was the 25 stone man's dissection - the lungs, heart and diaphragm shoved right up the top of his chest. Also, parts of his flesh were black from gangrene, especially one "part" they didn't linger on but I hope a few men took notice of.

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