(no subject)

[lavendersparkle]

Whilst watching trashy TV last night ('Freaky Eaters: Addicted to Cheese' if your interested) I pondered a technique beloved of diet make over shows: the years worth of food in one room method. For those more discerning in their viewing, this is where the 'expert' takes the victim subject of the show into a room which contains all the food she eats in an average week/month/year depending how long a time period is required to make it look gross. This is supposed to shock the subject into changing her diet. The thing is, I'm suspicious that a years worth of anyone's diet in cold congealed form would look pretty disgusting. I have a pretty healthy diet but I might be put off by the sight of a years supply of beans and chickpeas.* One of their favourite techniques is to work out how much salt/sugar/fat there is in your diet and represent it with table salt/granulated sugar/lard. In this show they had a bath full of lard to represent how much animal fat she ate in a year. It looked gross but not much more gross than a bath half full of lard, which would represent the amount of animal fat it's healthy to eat in a year.

So, what have we learnt? One plate's worth of food is more appetising than 1095 plates worth of cold congealed food.

*Actually I think I'd really like a years supply of chickpeas nom nom nom. A years supply of the methane I produce having eaten them might suffocate me on the other hand.

Comments

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

If somebody showed me a room with all the food I would eat in a year I would be overwhelmed with "OH NOES it's going to go off how to preserve it arghghghg".

[naath.livejournal.com]

They should be forced to also show a room containing, in the same format, all the food that would be contained in a "healthy" diet (100%, no more, no less, of the RDA of every nutrient perhaps). If there is a problem with people over-eating (I'm not sure there is) then the lack of sensible representation of what you "should" eat could easily be contributing to that.