The Men Who Made Us Fat
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No - read the OP and you'll see the links have been changed from iPlayer to YouTube.
I've just updated Episode 3 with the appropriate iPlayer link and when that expires I'll change it to a more appropriate one.
This. How many fatties choose Diet Coke than go on to eat a packet of biscuits. Bonkers. Adult human beings should have only themselves to blame for their diet. I do feel for children of some "people" though
How would you know that coke contains a huge amount of calories. Even if you do know, drinking it just makes you want more, its designed to make people want more.
If we keep blaming the people for this problem it will never be solved.
Because the information is freely available providing you know where to look - sometimes it's as easy as looking on the side of the can or bottle you are drinking from.
But people are lazy and ignorant and will blame everyone but themselves for their problems rather than facing up to things and admitting fault. Okay, not everyone can make the leap from sugar-laced carbonated beverage to unhealthy, but ignorance can't always be the excuse here, can it?
Well, yes and no.
We've all got a weakness for unhealthy food in one way or another, but there's nobody forcing it down our throats or making us eat or drink as much of it as we do. Sure, lifestyle is partly to blame, as is the ready availability of such foodstuffs, but you can always choose to eschew it in favour of something healthier instead.
I honestly can't remember the last time I saw cola for sale and there wasn't a much healthier option right there alongside it, just waiting to be picked up instead.
It could be argued that 'people' are as equally, if not more, to blame than the manufacturers. Sure, they are making it easier than ever for us to follow an almost wholly unhealthy diet, but we still choose to follow it.
After all, there's this wonderful thing we used to have called self-control. I'm not quite sure where it's gone, but I suppose we'll find it again should we bother to look hard enough.
Watched the final episode of this last night (had it recorded because I've been away), I found this a very frustrating program to watch in the same way as I found things like Super Size Me annoying.
The presenter has an agenda, clearly, but wasn't willing to admit it, instead pretending he was providing a collection of unbiased facts and letting me, the viewer, decide.
I think the part that annoyed me the most was when he was comparing a can of coke to a bottle of fruit smoothie and saying "this has more calories than this", then he continues comparing a burger to a huge dressing coated salad etc. Now his point was that companies are selling health where the foods aren't healthy. But his definition of "health" was purely based on the calorific content. Personally I'd prefer my child drank a small bottle of pure pressed fruit pulp than a can of coke. People NEED calories to live, the content is printed right there on every single thing we buy in the UK, it isn't hard to work it out.
Whenever somebody does one of these programs they ALWAYS present the food companies as the devil, citing the fact that their marketing departments try and con us into thinking the products is something better than it is. Well Durrr....
Imagine you went to a car dealership and there was a bullet check list on the windscreen that read:
* Good MPG
* Comfortable seats
* Terrible road-handling
* Bad Head-lights
It doesn't happen, it's stupid, it's not how you sell something. Heck we're even taught pointing out a negative is a huge no-no when we learn to write a CV to sell OURSELVES!
The food industry is not full of saints, it is full of huge corporations trying to sell a product. As a society we have allowed food to become a product and on the whole it has made our lives far easier. A product will only ever have its good points shoved in your face, unlike most other products under the sun, the food industry is also required to (albeit in a less obvious manner) tell you all the bad points by way of nutritional facts.
I'm not saying that should change, I very much like to know what is in my food, however I am under no illusion it is 100% up to me to flip the pack over and damn well read the clearly printed information...
We are absorbing America's blame culture like a sponge and it's a horrible way for society to turn.
The presenter has an agenda, clearly, but wasn't willing to admit it, instead pretending he was providing a collection of unbiased facts and letting me, the viewer, decide.
I think the part that annoyed me the most was when he was comparing a can of coke to a bottle of fruit smoothie and saying "this has more calories than this", then he continues comparing a burger to a huge dressing coated salad etc. Now his point was that companies are selling health where the foods aren't healthy. But his definition of "health" was purely based on the calorific content. Personally I'd prefer my child drank a small bottle of pure pressed fruit pulp than a can of coke. People NEED calories to live, the content is printed right there on every single thing we buy in the UK, it isn't hard to work it out.
Whenever somebody does one of these programs they ALWAYS present the food companies as the devil, citing the fact that their marketing departments try and con us into thinking the products is something better than it is. Well Durrr....
Imagine you went to a car dealership and there was a bullet check list on the windscreen that read:
* Good MPG
* Comfortable seats
* Terrible road-handling
* Bad Head-lights
It doesn't happen, it's stupid, it's not how you sell something. Heck we're even taught pointing out a negative is a huge no-no when we learn to write a CV to sell OURSELVES!
The food industry is not full of saints, it is full of huge corporations trying to sell a product. As a society we have allowed food to become a product and on the whole it has made our lives far easier. A product will only ever have its good points shoved in your face, unlike most other products under the sun, the food industry is also required to (albeit in a less obvious manner) tell you all the bad points by way of nutritional facts.
I'm not saying that should change, I very much like to know what is in my food, however I am under no illusion it is 100% up to me to flip the pack over and damn well read the clearly printed information...
We are absorbing America's blame culture like a sponge and it's a horrible way for society to turn.
I only saw the last 10 minutes of the last show, but what I saw didn't seem particularly balanced
I watched them all from start to finish.
I found the journalism to be biased and typical of the genre.
There are some good points made, always the same basic points mind you. Sure the subject matter and presentation changes but how is this truly different to Super Size Me? Morgan Spurlock picked a specific corporation and this was the root of his films success, this was a made for TV documentary so it was more general.
The basic message thread through each episode was the same "corporations have found that unhealthy products are cheaper to produce and easier to sell, however people like to think they are being healthy therefore rather than change the products making them more expensive and frankly harder to market (a lettuce is far less tasty than a salad containing lettuce and dressing and meat and croutons etc.), they have changed the marketing"
It's a tiresome thread, done to death and not in the least bit eye-opening or shocking for anybody who has ever given a few moments thought to what they put in their mouths.
For somebody who has perhaps missed all of the other similar documentaries of the past few decades then perhaps some of this was revolutionary.
My point still stands as to why I found it annoying to watch. I don't know what these journalists think they are going to achieve (beyond recognition). The reality is as simple as this:
Food manufacturers make and sell (i.e. market) products. Some of those products are very unhealthy even though they may appear to be healthy, these are companies I would prefer not to buy from, however everything they do is, and should be, above board. Legally everything that is in food in the UK is not just listed but has been chemically analysed for us, in many cases this data is processed even further and presented in the form of nice little bar-charts or percentages. As consumers we have far more information to hand about the food we buy than any other product out there.
People are generally savvy when buying other products, so why not food? To use the title, NOBODY made ANYBODY fat, corporations put products out there which people have consumed, of their own will. Their eyes were open at all times and if they chose not to look at the packaging then it is their own damned fault.
I am nothing to do with the food industry, I just hate that we are going down the route that everything is somebody else's fault. It isn't, it's yours and yours alone.
If you don't like these products, then don't buy them. Nobody needs Coke, they buy it because they like it (and sure some get addicted to it, but it is well known that this will happen and you mostly hear people joking about how they are). If you are of the opinion that the company making and marketing that product is evil and that the product needs to go away, stop buying it, make sure your kids don't buy it (until they are old enough to decide for themselves). If enough people agree then they will also stop.
What isn't needed is for the food companies to be forced to put negative advertising all over their products, if the health authorities want to do anything they need far better targeting education and advertising to the masses, not to persecute business as ultimately business naturally bends to the will of the consumer.
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All fair points but the value I saw in this show was that it was an educational tool to hopefully raise awareness and encourage people to think about what they do and question things a little more....
I agree that the blame culture we seem to have these days sucks though.
I agree that the blame culture we seem to have these days sucks though.