The stars are given food for thought
REMEMBER the 2004 documentary Super Size Me? It hit the headlines and received an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature, losing out to Born Into Brothels: Calcutta’s Red Light Kids. In Super Size Me, its director, Morgan Spurlock, turned the spotlight on the nutritious value of food served in a certain fast food eaterie. He used himself as a guinea pig, eating three meals a day there over the course of a month – and saying “yes” every time he was asked if he wanted to super-size something.
It didn’t really come as much of a surprise when the three doctors monitoring him announced his health had gone dramatically downhill.
The Junk Food Experiment follows a similar path. Apparently, we Brits consume 22 million takeaway meals every week, which perhaps explains why so many fast food places appear on high streets across the land.
Now six celebrities – singer Peter Andre, The Chase mastermind Shaun Wallace, politician Nadine Dorries, actress Hayley Tamaddon, Olympian Tessa Sanderson and TV personality Hugo Taylor – have volunteered to spend 21 days chowing down on burgers, fried chicken and pizza, which should see them consume 50 per cent more calories than their bodies actually need.
Keeping an eye on them is Dr Michael Mosley, a dietary expert who wants to know the exact impact of such an extreme menu.
Every seven days he will put the group through a fullbody MOT comprised of more than 60 different medical tests designed by experts to reveal exactly what is happening to them.
Andre hopes that his six-day fitness regime means he won’t feel any bad effects: “I’ve always believed that we should always focus on activity rather than what you eat.
Hayley Tamaddon is one of the celebrities taking part in an extreme junk food eating regime.
I want to see if I’m actually right. Maybe when you balance out bad and training, you’re fine.”
Unfortunately, his wife Emily isn’t thrilled by his rather smelly meals: “He’s banned from the living room because it stinks, it even smells in bed.”
Oh dear.
But there’s worse to come when Andre heads off for one of his regular check-ups. Nevertheless, he copes better than some of the other famous faces involved.
Hayley Tamaddon has a history of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), so you would expect her to struggle with such fatty meals. Of the experiment she says, “I want to
prove it is all about what you eat that affects your body, whether you’ve got IBS or not.”
Sure enough, a week in, she suffers such severe stomach pain that Mosley sends her to see a specialist who claims, “I’m worried and concerned that the damage this junk food is doing might not be reversible.”
The rest of the gang suffer too, with symptoms such as sleep apnoea, headaches and memory loss raising their ugly heads.
In truth, nothing featured in the programme should come as that much of a surprise, but it may persuade some viewers to change their ways.