I just saw this on the recommendation of a friend. British food critic Giles Coren, discusses his morbid mortality and goes out to find what diet/food will help increase longevity. The show covers - Calorie Restriction - Paleo (and extreme Paleo) - Fruitarians and there's even the idea of a "fecal transplant" (yes you read that right) For those in the UK heres the link http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05n2csc For those not in the UK. um......try to make sense of what gets written (if any) on this thread and chime in. Spoiler The show concentrates mainly on Calorie Restriction. Its around 1000kcal per day and also integrates Fasting (about 18hrs per day). I would call it Intermittent Fasting but 18 out of 24hrs of fasting is a bit more than Intermittent. The couple he follows look like walking zombies, not much an idea on how to cook (for breakfast they had strawberries, onions, lemon with lemon rind) And sometimes instead of eating they meditate on how a single blueberry would taste and feel. And that would fill them up. However the couple doing this, is clearly wanting to live forever (or as long as possible). There is not much mention in regards to health and upon the mention of age etc, the Husband gets very animated, stating he is still a little boy. Even goes to complimenting the Host (Giles) that in 4 days of Calorie Restrictive Diet, his complexion and wrinkles have improved. Next Giles explores the Paleo diet. (high fat, no carbs etc) he was quite impressed with the idea. Except that a front runner made the Paleo event seem quite Evangelical and kept repeating the mantra "I am a Fat Burning Beast". Giles then goes to meet a man, who does "extreme" paleo. Where he eats everything raw. Including the goat that he kills and guts in his own back garden. (not for the weak stomached, but he literally eats and drinks everything) The show closes off with one final event. The Fruitarians, the only thing I learnt from this , was that they consider any seeded food as a fruit. So stuff like Tomatos, Zucchini/Cucumbers...are veggies but they consider as a fruit. There wasn't a clear ending, to be fair, it kind of fizzled out. I think they hoped that this was going to be a multi part show, but I guess their budget forced them to turn it into a 1hr show instead. Shame really, as I would've liked to see him tackled further diets
I'm aware of the use of faecal transplantation for the treatment of C. difficile; didn't realise it could help you live forever! Where on earth would the donor stool come from? I don't think the word 'vegetable' has any biological definition, whereas the scientific definition of 'fruit' is the mature ovary of a flowering plant; all sorts of things that we might consider vegetables are actually fruit, including the things you mention above. It all sounds fairly horrendous - I'm perfectly happy eating a relatively sensible and healthy diet and not living forever, thanks. There certainly seems to be something about diet (and fitness) that encourages all kinds of extreme nonsense, doesn't there?
When you mentioned "fruitarian" first thought was of Pi in the 6th season of "Castle," LOL! But seriously, that sounds like an interesting tv show. Hopefully Netflix will pick it up next year. (We do get a lot of British shows.)
Would have been better as a mini series, I checked it out. The CR couple were weird... Creeped me out.
Yeah I think the people were hoping it was to be shown as a mini series, but the final say sometimes comes from the Beeb who probably made the decision. Plenty of other diet ads to check, including Atkins etc.