Channel 5 TONIGHT: The Shocking Truth About Diets and Exercise

[JITR]

Episode 1. With thousands of diets out there, we ask - where do you start?
Screens tonight (Sun 05 Jan 2025) at 17:35

I watched this on Now TV last night. In the main its about weight loss in the general population via exercise (gym clubs) and commercial diet programmes (including the dietary products they promote). Topics include obesity in the population (treated sympathetically), BMI (but not indicators like waist measurement), Diabetes Type 2 (overview), sugar and fat.

The format for each topic: a short introduction and comments from professional contributors with good communication skills, such as Ian Marber, the author of Man Food, Dr David Unwin, GP pioneer of Type 2 remission without medication, and Rhiannon Lambert, author of the Science of Nutrition (2021), a well written and brilliantly illustrated DK book I happened to find in a charity shop yesterday afternoon.

There was no definite answer to the question Where do you start? The conclusion was weight loss maintenance is the issue. One contributor said the Mediterranean diet and 5:2 intermittent fasting were sustainable.

All in all a good contribution to the public debate, one which Diabetes UK would do well to follow and support.

Watch it if you can. I'd be interested in your views.

Note: there is already a thread about a trailer to this programme which conveyed entirely the wrong impression. It provoked a violent reaction about stigmatising diabetics. There is no such content in the programme itself. Hence a fresh start.

 

[beating_my_betes]

The claim of diabetes being a lifestyle disease is in the programme. I'd say it's uncharitable to make the assumptions that have been made, but it's a statement that absolutely should have come with extra qualification. But unfortunatley, such 'unqualified' opinion undermined much of this mess of a programme.

Putting aside the terrible presentation throughout, and the suffocating format, I doubt anyone could come away without more questions than were answered. And those issue would no doubt increase exponentially if people looked into some of the talking heads e.g David Unwin.

The ball was dropped in many of the sections, including the delivery of non-scientific nonsense, but in other cases I was very surprised when they got things right.

 

[beating_my_betes]

And no...there's nothing inherently sustainable about TMD or 5:2 😉

 

[medidia]

The mediterranean diet is good bit it's a gimmick, there is no agreed definition of the term which actually comes from the United States.
And the so called Mediterranean and diet is also a myth because it's based on what would have been eaten in remote parts of Southern Italy and Greece in the fifties....
The principles are good but there is no need to eat foods from Mediterranean countries to obtain the same results.

 

[CliffH]

The mediterranean diet is good bit it's a gimmick, there is no agreed definition of the term which actually comes from the United States.
And the so called Mediterranean and diet is also a myth because it's based on what would have been eaten in remote parts of Southern Italy and Greece in the fifties....
The principles are good but there is no need to eat foods from Mediterranean countries to obtain the same results.

I guess that there are also the risks of extrapolating from insufficient data and/or confusing correlation with causality.

 

[medidia]

I guess that there are also the risks of extrapolating from insufficient data and/or confusing correlation with causality.

Exactly. All research on nutrition is inherently "unscientific" because it's impossible to recreate precisely the same lab conditions in real life in terms of measuring either nutrients in individual foods, the food matrix, or actual intake. Real food cannot be measured precisely, too many variants, without mentioning individual variations in the way we absorb nutrients, lifestyle factors (e.g. exercise, stress) etc.

 

[CliffH]

Exactly. All research on nutrition is inherently "unscientific" because it's impossible to recreate precisely the same lab conditions in real life in terms of measuring either nutrients in individual foods, the food matrix, or actual intake. Real food cannot be measured precisely, too many variants, without mentioning individual variations in the way we absorb nutrients, lifestyle factors (e.g. exercise, stress) etc.

I guess, as a minimum, you'd need to isolate smoking as a confounding variable, given the impact that smoking definitely has on many aspects of health.

 

[medidia]

Yes indeed. A few years ago I was planning to do an MSc in nutrition science, I just did the preliminary course to bridge the gap from a non scientific degree, realised there is no science in nutrition so I went in a different direction. I didn't look at diabetes much at the time, but it's exactly the same.

 

[CliffH]

Yes indeed. A few years ago I was planning to do an MSc in nutrition science, I just did the preliminary course to bridge the gap from a non scientific degree, realised there is no science in nutrition so I went in a different direction. I didn't look at diabetes much at the time, but it's exactly the same.

My background's Psychology (yes it is a science, thank you) and I learnt early on that, because of human foibles, we had to design research studies very carefully, to take account of potential confounding variables.

 

[beating_my_betes]

The mediterranean diet is good bit it's a gimmick, there is no agreed definition of the term which actually comes from the United States.
And the so called Mediterranean and diet is also a myth because it's based on what would have been eaten in remote parts of Southern Italy and Greece in the fifties....
The principles are good but there is no need to eat foods from Mediterranean countries to obtain the same results.

With a few exceptions, all diets can be seen as gimmicky. All can work and all can fail. All can be sustainable and all can be unsustainable.

Regardless of the veracity (or not) of the historical context, a diet should be assessed on it's potential for succeeding in a given/prescribed context. And on that charge, the current recommendations of TMD™ are right up there when it comes to a well-researched dietary template for health.

 

[DaveB]

I thought the programme was poor with a lot of the usual, invalid mantra. First the constant mention of Calories which are irrelevant in what you eat. The comment 'A Calorie is a Calorie' just isn't true as the body treats each food group differently. The focus should be on the Carbs as this food group is the one that raises weight and blood sugar. We should forget measuring Calories in what you eat as it's based on bad science. The critique on Gym membership was plain stupid. I'm a gym member. Gyms are well air-conditioned and not hot and stuffy. I challenge the idea that they are full of bacteria. So in summary the programme was not a good contribution to public debate.