Telly diet gives indigestion

TV Scope You Are What You Eat Channel 4, Tuesdays 8.30 p.m

TV Scope You Are What You Eat Channel 4, Tuesdays 8.30 p.m. This was the worst health programme I have seen on TV in a long time.

It consisted of health expert, Dr Gillian McKeith, bullying a young woman, Yvonne Grant, into changing her lifestyle.

Gillian's first piece of advice is "eat right or die young". Yvonne is 17 stone and a fast food addict. Dr McKeith promises that she will be a different person within eight weeks.

Okay, Yvonne does need to lose weight but there has to be a better way. She has to undergo colonic cleansing, tongue examination on screen and poo examination in the lab plus constant humiliation from the food expert.

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Her self-esteem is battered, her fridge is turned out and a typical week's greed is laid out for all to see.

Also, according to Gillian, she is an environmental hazard because of her farting problem.

Yvonne, on the other hand, spends the first part of the programme laughing and calling herself a "fat, lazy b*****d" and a failed bulimic. In other words she does the eating but doesn't throw up.

The food expert prescribes berries, pumpkin seeds, lentils, avocado and brown rice, among other things.

This is a diet that anyone could lose weight on without the help of a health expert. It is pointed out to us that a pot of fruit yoghurt has seven spoons of sugar and a tin of beans four. So what.

Yvonne is also ordered to exercise and yes, she does look good after eight weeks. She is two stone lighter and three dress sizes smaller.

However, I bet anyone a €100 that the weight will go back up within a few weeks because this kind of eating is unsustainable as a lifestyle choice. There is nothing wrong with a tin of beans or a fruit yoghurt and there is no such thing as "bad" food.

This is no doubt only the first of many programmes we will have to suffer because of our growing obesity "problem" which is the new smoking. Spare us from health experts telling us how to live our lives.

The vast majority of us know what we should and shouldn't eat and we shouldn't have to watch this kind of bullying on our screens.

Next week, the Aram Family will, I have no doubt, be ritually humiliated by Dr McKeith.

Jacky Jones is regional health promotion manager with the Western Health Board and a member of the National Task Force on Obesity.