…so these celebs should be VERY worried!
SUE CRAWFORD finds out what happened when six famous faces lived on a diet of junk food for three weeks
AN EXTREME scientific experiment which involved six celebrities eating nothing but junk food for three weeks, had such a devastating affect on their health, that half of those taking part were forced to quit before the trial ended. With more than 22 million takeaways consumed in Britain every week and 1,000 new fast food outlets opening every year, ITV’s The Junk Food Experiment aimed to establish exactly how this type of food was damaging the nation’s health.
But while doctors were expecting some side effects such as weight gain, they were shocked to see how quickly people’s health deteriorated. The blood pressure of former Olympic athlete Tessa Sanderson shot so dangerously high that concerned doctors were forced to monitor her round the clock.
Conservative MP Nadine Dorries, 61, found her memory was so badly affected, that for the first time since becoming an MP in 2005, she had to write out in full a House of Commons speech for fear she might forget what she planned to say. Made In Chelsea star Hugo Taylor, 32, suffered anxiety attacks.
Dr Michael Mosley who monitored the three-week experiment said: “I was shocked by the widespread damage the junk food diet did, how quickly it all happened and how varied it was. We expected to see a bit of weight gain, but not necessarily much more.
“However we saw anxiety, the devastation of gut bacteria and impact on the liver, blood pressure and sleep. The thing I personally really worry about is the impact of these foods on the brain. There’s no doubt at all that things like anxiety and depression are strongly linked to a junk-food diet.”
In the 90-minute documentary the volunteers, who also included actress Hayley Tamaddon, singer Peter Andre, 45, and Shaun Wallace, 58, from The Chase, spent a week eating only burgers for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The week after they ate only pizza and in the third week only fried chicken.
Under the watchful eye of world-renowned dietary expert Dr Mosley, the man who popularised the 5:2 diet, the celebrities underwent 60 different medical tests a week, which included stool samples, monitoring heart rate and sleep patterns.
The results made grim reading. Javelin gold medal winner Tessa Sanderson, 62, one of the fittest people to take part, woke up feeling ill at the start of the third week. Doctors were called when checks revealed her blood pressure had soared dangerously high after two weeks eating only pizzas and burgers. She had a blood pressure reading 187/120 and was monitored daily until returned to normal – less than 120/80.
Tessa, who competed at six Olympics, said: “I’ve never had high blood pressure before, but suddenly my levels went out of the window. When I told my husband I was choked, because I never expected it. I exercise and I eat healthily I thought, ‘Will it come down again, or will I suffer from this all the time?’ I was extremely worried.
“When I finished it I went through a massive pot of vegetables. It has made me realise that fast foods have so many hidden things , like salt and the way they are fried. You can eat these things in moderation and enjoy them, but you should not be silly about it, because it will damage your body.”
Dof it R MOSLEY said: “The scariest thing in the whole experiment was Tessa’s blood pressure. It went up so much there was a risk of something catastrophic happening.
“They were all pretty healthy at the start and Tessa didn’t have high blood pressure before. She’s an Olympic athlete, she looks after her body and she exercises, so we were really surprised the diet affected her so fast.”
Nadine Dorries, Tory MP for Mid Bedfordshire, suffered several side effects. By the second week her blood pressure and bad cholesterol levels had risen and she also suffered heart palpitations, stomach cramps, constipation, painful wind and bloating.
“At the end of the third week I got a phone call from the professor about my stool sample,” she said. “He told me the pathologists in the laboratory would think it was the stool sample from someone suffering with Crohn’s Disease, and that was just in three weeks.
“I knew it was an issue, and the day after the experiment finished I booked myself in to have a colonic irrigation. I’d never had one in my life, but I wanted to get all the bad stuff out of my system as quickly as possible.
“Apparently it is normally painless, but I screamed and they stopped immediately and said they weren’t going to carry on as the pain was the sign of someone who has an inflamed bowel. Thankfully everything is okay now, but the junk food had done something really bad to my bowels.”
Former Coronation Street actress Hayley Tamaddon, 42, also sparked alarm after ending up so severely dehydrated that her kidneys began to suffer. Doctors warned that the damage the food was doing to her might not be reversible.
“Basically what I was putting in was coming out the other end quicker than I could eat it,” Hayley said. “My gut had not had anything like that for a long time. I don’t eat fried chicken, I stay away from it normally, so my poor tummy just didn’t know what to do with itself.
“On top of that I was having to eat 2,500 calories a day – double my usual intake. I’m quite little, not even 5ft 2in, so for me that was a huge amount of calories.
“I was eating two fillet meals with cheese, plus hash browns, with a large chips, a large coleslaw, a large beans, a large gravy and a fizzy drink.”
N‘I was shocked by the widespread damage the junk food diet did and how quickly it all happened’
EW findings announced last week by scientists from Paris-Sorbonne University revealed that every 10 per cent increase in ultra-processed food consumption was linked to a 14 per cent higher risk of death.
Fat, sugar and salt all fuel obesity and high blood pressure, which have been linked to heart disease, cancer and Type-2 diabetes. A 2016 survey found most people eat fast food on average two days a week but that one in six young people are eating it twice a day.
“We are raising a nation of children on utter dead food, there’s no nutrition in this junk,” Nadine warned. “I live in a rural area and three fast food outlets have opened in just the past year. It’s very worrying.”
She added: “I spoke to a doctor in an intensive care unit in a major hospital, who told me they had five beds in IC and all five beds were filled with people suffering from complications as a result of obesity. That is a massive cost to the NHS and I can only see that getting worse.”
Dr Mosley, who presents the BBC Two series Trust Me, I’m A Doctor, said: “I hope this documentary will be a wake-up call and that we will begin to see major changes in the way people live.
“You are what you eat. People know that eating junk food is bad for their waistlines, but I don’t think they understand just how much and how awful the impact is on so many other systems in their body too.”
● The Junk Food Experiment is on ITV on February 27 at 9pm