Food Unwrapped – Diet Special

Did you catch Food Unwrapped with Jimmy Doherty on channel 4 last night? I’d thoroughly recommend watching it, if you missed it you can catch up on 4OD here. The show looks at dieting as it’s the time of year the dieting industry goes crazy with all sorts of weird and wonderful magic new diets which promise miracle weight loss results, quickly and without having to strain yourself with more exercise or cutting down the amount you eat. At this time of year there isn’t really much emphasis on just eating more healthily, with a balanced diet and regular exercise.

We would always say if you want to lose weight the only true long term solution is to change your lifestyle, eat a healthy range of fresh foods and start doing more exercise so you are burning more than you are taking in. This may be a hard way and there may be quicker ways (such as cutting out certain food groups) but these tend not to be sustainable and you only just end up putting back on what you lost.

By doing this you are not only potentially losing weight but you are living a more healthy lifestyle which has a whole host of benefits and cuts your risk of other illnesses and health problems both now and in later life. On the show one of the diets they focused on was gluten free which has gained much coverage over the last year or so. A gluten free diet is recommended for people who suffer from coeliac disease, a condition where the body’s immune system attacks healthy tissue, the immune system mistakes substances found inside gluten as a threat to the body and attacks them. Coeliac disease isn’t an allergy or an intolerance to gluten. There is no harm in eating gluten free food if you do not suffer from coeliac disease, if you happen to like a particular gluten free product then go ahead and eat it! However cutting gluten out completely is not recommended unless you suffer from coeliac disease or have been advised to buy your doctor. A gluten free diet has been promoted as a way to lose weight, however there isn’t any supporting evidence for this so you are better off just trying to stay healthy with a balanced diet and an active lifestyle.

So what healthy foods did they recommend on the show? Well our old favourite beetroot juice was featured! Beetroot juice has been shown to increase sporting performance in athletes (read our blog about it here), the show runs a slightly unscientific experiment (but it is just TV afterall) with presenter Kate Quilton trying a shot of beetroot juice before exercise as well as a placebo (with the nitrate removed) before the same exercise, I won’t spoil the results for you…

Channel 4 Food Unwrapped