Episode 1 The Men Who Made Us Fat


Episode 1

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More people in the world are overweight than undernourished.

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Obesity levels are rising.

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I'm Jacques Perretti and in this series, I'm going to trace

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those responsible for a revolution in our eating habits.

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I'll be looking at how decisions made behind closed doors

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transformed food into an addiction...

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People have a hard time controlling their weight.

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Their brains are being hijacked.

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..at how business changed the shape of a nation...

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From a marketing standpoint, as long as it didn't curtail

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or anchor you in a negative way, you were fine.

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..and at how the food industry itself choreographs temptation.

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Everybody who says it's you, it's all your own fault, forget it.

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The evidence is the exact contrary.

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It is a war.

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It's a war between our bodies

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and the accessibility that modern society gives us with food.

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I'll be telling the story of those

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who turned eating food into an epidemic.

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Two-thirds of British adults are overweight

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and one in four of us is obese.

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That's 40% over our ideal weight.

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It's officially categorised as a disease.

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What's strange is how quickly this has all happened.

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The average person in Britain is nearly three stone heavier

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than they were 50 years ago

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and this extra weight doesn't just affect the way we look -

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it massively increases our chances of getting a host of related diseases.

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It's a new kind of epidemic.

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DANCE MUSIC BLARES

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At any one time, a quarter of the population is doing battle with their weight.

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But we don't know how it came to this.

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Is it down to us, or the companies which produce our food?

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Ursula is starting a new regime.

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From childhood, I was always overweight, always.

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Keep it going, bring the arms out in front.

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While Beulah has managed to lose 2½ stone.

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It's always that temptation - you've had a little bit,

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you want a little bit more.

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Excellent, keep it going.

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I still see myself going into a shop and looking at the labels -

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buy one, get one free, or buy one, get two free, sometimes.

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I tried many times.

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There's always fruits and vegetables in the house,

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it was just my choice that I used to always go for the unhealthy food.

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It's sort of like, "Yeah, I really shouldn't have eaten that".

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Sometimes I thought that I was buying healthy food,

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but I never looked at the labels.

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Only later, when you empty the packages, you realise "what have I done?"

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It's too late now.

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You've got to have great determination, got to be really strong.

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We're not becoming lazier or greedier, but the food industry

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has changed the very nature of what we eat in the last 40 years.

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And that may have changed our shape, too.

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'What's even more worrying is the fat we CAN'T see.

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'I wanted to find out whether changes in our food have altered

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'even those of us who don't consider ourselves overweight.

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'An MRI machine is about to show me the horrible truth.'

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Hello, Jacques - how are you?

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'There may be quite a lot more fat in me than I think.'

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We can actually look inside your body to see how much fat you have

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externally and internally.

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OK, so you'll be up to see all the fat that is inside my body.

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Absolutely. Your fat will have nowhere to hide.

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'Professor Jimmy Bell is a research scientist

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'working at Hammersmith Hospital in London.

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'He studies how fat is distributed INSIDE the body.'

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We're just finishing this set.

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Yes, then we'll move on and do the axial images.

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'After half an hour in the MRI machine, I'm nervous.'

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I will show you some of the images.

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The fat appears as white,

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very bright white, so you've got,

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as you see, fat external - the subcutaneous fat we're all familiar with -

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but the fat we are interested in is the fat here,

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what we call internal fat, especially visceral or intra-abdominal fat.

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There does seem to be rather a lot of it.

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Well, it's interesting that you have very low levels of

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external fat, subcutaneous fat, but you have a considerable amount -

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more than one would expect

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for someone of your size - of internal fat, or visceral fat.

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You can see here, for example,

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your kidneys are actually swimming in a sea of fat.

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At a glance, I would say you have 4 to 5 litres of internal fat

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that you're carrying around your organs.

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-4 to 5 litres?

-Yes.

-And is that normal?

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We expect someone of your age,

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someone who is fit, to have less than two litres of internal fat.

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Wow, so I've got twice as much fat inside me as I should have.

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Exactly, but you have to realise that someone who is very obese

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will carry 10 to 15 litres of internal fat.

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You're a very good example of what we define as someone who is thin outside,

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so very little external fat, and fat inside - so that's a toffee. Thin outside, fat inside.

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'That's me - toffee - thin outside, fat inside.

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'It's this kind of invisible obesity that threatens many of us -

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'these hidden fat deposits put me at risk of diabetes

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'and cardiovascular disease.'

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-Long-term, this actually could be quite troublesome for your health.

-Yes.

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'And it's the same for millions of us.'

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Unfortunately, normality in the UK has become someone who is overweight or obese,

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who doesn't have enough sleep, drinks too much

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and who works very long hours.

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'It's believed our appetite for high-calorie foods

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'came about 10,000 years ago, when we were hunter-gatherers.

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'Now the food industry has made fattening foods available everywhere.'

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We're cavemen that moved from a cave into a supermarket,

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and there were all these delicious things that I want to eat.

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Some of us restrain ourselves from doing it,

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other people find it very difficult.

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Genetically, we haven't changed,

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but our environment, our access to cheap food - that's changed.

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We've been bombarded all day, every day by the food industry

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to consume more and more food.

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That's their job - make money making us fat.

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It is a war.

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It's a war between our bodies

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and the accessibility that modern society gives us with food.

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As a scientist, I feel really depressed,

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because we are losing the war against obesity.

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Britain has got fat in just 40 years.

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Why?

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To find out, we have to go back to America in the early '70s,

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and the political deals that were done.

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Richard Nixon was president.

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The country was in crisis, torn apart by the Vietnam War.

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But a bigger threat to Nixon came from housewives,

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protesting at the soaring cost of food.

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Food prices shot up higher last month than they ever have

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in the past 40 years.

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Farmers wanted fewer restrictions on their output

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and with an election looming, Nixon needed their support.

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His solution was to appoint this man - Earl Butz -

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the Secretary for Agriculture in 1971.

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It was a decision which would have a profound impact on the food

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we eat today.

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Butz was from a rural Indiana family, but he was no hick.

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He was a shrewd academic and more importantly,

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a friend to the farmers.

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Now, in rural life,

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we have all the amenities of urban living and should have,

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and therefore agriculture becomes a way of making a living.

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I want as good a living for these family farmers as their city cousins can get.

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HORN HONKS

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Butz had a vision - to transform agriculture from small farms

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into mass production, delivering cheap food on an undreamt-of scale.

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When Earl Butz became the Minister of Agriculture in 1971,

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he urged farmers to farm from fencerow to fencerow.

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His motto was, "get big or get out"

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and he was to change the American landscape.

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It was the death of the smallholding and the birth of this -

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giant industrial farming.

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'This surge in farm production

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'would ultimately lead to a surge in obesity.

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'George Morton farms the land around Lafayette in Indiana.

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'As a young man, he knew Earl Butz

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'and was taught farm economics by him.'

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Tell me a little bit, George, about fencerow to fencerow farming -

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what did that mean?

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-It means you just produce as much as you can.

-Right!

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You don't leave any land unproductive.

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You keep producing as much as you can.

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How did you feel when these changes were taking place -

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what did it feel like for you here?

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It felt great, because that was the opportunity we had to prosper.

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MOOING

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The new, larger harvests of corn became feed for the mountains

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of cheap beef pouring into supermarkets.

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-'Earl Butz encouraged farmers to grow still more.'

-Let's see...

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'George Morton's farm went from 20 to 3,000 acres.'

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'Butz's idea was simple -

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'to grow more corn than had ever been grown before.'

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There's been some criticism of that policy.

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I describe that policy in a single word - I call it plenty.

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The more farmers grew, the more they sold, but there was still a surplus.

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Butz championed a new product which would change everything.

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A Japanese scientist had invented a process

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that turned corn into a cheap sweetener.

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By the 1980s, high-fructose corn syrup would become

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the number one substitute for sugar.

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And it would make farmers like George very rich.

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I love the way, George, that this corn is gold. It really is gold!

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-It's gold in colour.

-It's the right colour!

-It's the right colour!

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And so it is gold, that's right. Gold to the farmer.

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The genius of the whole thing was that they were about to produce

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a fortune, not just from the fat of the land, but from the waste -

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the surplus corn that would have gone rotten could now be used

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to produce a brand-new industrial sweetener.

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Earl Butz transformed the American diet and, ultimately, its waistline.

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The nutritionist, Marion Nestle, has analysed

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how Butz paved the way for obesity.

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The number of calories produced in America

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and available to American consumers

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went from 3,200 in the 1970s and early '80s

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to 3,900 per person -

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almost twice as much as anybody needed -

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and that enormous increase, I think

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is the cause of a great deal of difficulty.

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The Super Bowl has come to Indianapolis this year

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and is America's biggest football game.

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and after Thanksgiving, its biggest binge.

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On one day, the US consumes 14,000 tonnes of tortilla chips,

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4,000 tonnes of guacamole,

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1.25 billion chicken wings.

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40 years on, America is reaping what Earl Butz and the farmers sowed.

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This is the great American meal - beef, fed on corn.

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Bread, made with corn syrup to make it last longer.

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Fries, fried in corn oil.

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Ketchup, made with corn syrup.

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Soda, made with corn syrup.

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There's a direct link, I think, between the overproduction

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in the '70s of corn and the overconsumption of food today.

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Thanks to Butz, corn syrup spread into almost all processed foods -

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everything from coleslaw to pizza toppings.

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But its greatest impact was when it was put into soft drinks -

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the largest single source of calories in the American diet.

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By 1984, Coke and Pepsi had replaced sugar with corn syrup.

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It was a decisive moment, because corn syrup had now arrived.

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It was flowing into the bloodstream of America.

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Hank Cardello was the marketing director of Coca-Cola USA

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as Coke was adopting corn syrup.

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Hank, when corn syrup was introduced,

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what was it like for the food industry?

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It was an innovation. I mean, clearly,

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it's not like the industry wanted to go to high-fructose corn syrup.

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The pricing of sugar was going up, then they had to convince

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themselves that if they switched to whatever it was - corn syrup or

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any other sweetener, that the tastes of the products weren't compromised.

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'It was a massive risk for Coke to mess with the taste,

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'but savings justified it. It was a third cheaper than sugar.

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'The economics were compelling.'

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When you sell four billion cases of a beverage, for instance,

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that's a big difference.

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So it doesn't take much - even a 10% reduction would make

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a huge difference in the price.

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Once you got past the taste, the quality, there's no downside.

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Again, there was nothing on the radar that said

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something is problematic here.

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You don't have obesity,

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there's no voices in the wilderness telling you you have a problem here.

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So obesity wasn't on the agenda at all?

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Wasn't even on the radar. In fact, the CDC - the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta -

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didn't start mapping out where states had increasing rates of obesity

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until 1985, so really, we were going along pell-mell.

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Our goal at the time was to make our products ubiquitous,

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as any marketer would.

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So, from a marketing standpoint,

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as long as it didn't curtail or anchor you in a negative way, you were fine.

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The savings from replacing sugar with corn syrup caused

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a boom in profits and inspired the drinks business to sell even more.

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They were on a roll.

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There were bigger bottles for the home

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and ever-larger cups for fast food outlets.

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Coca-Cola says these decisions

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were based on the ever-evolving desires of its customers.

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Quite frankly, the soda marketers became better marketers.

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And I think the company at the time got more aggressive.

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In two decades, average consumption of soft drinks almost doubled,

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from 350 cans a year to 600 -

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and America got fatter.

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Endocrinologist Dr Robert Lustig has analysed

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the impact of America's love affair with sweetened drinks.

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High-fructose corn syrup has a sweetness index of 120,

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so it's actually sweeter than sucrose.

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So you'd think, gee, if it's sweeter,

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you should be able to use less.

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But they don't - they use more. The question is, why is that?

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That's a question that only the soft drink companies can answer,

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but I can give you my impression.

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It's because they know that the sweeter they make it,

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the more we buy.

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The manufacturers reject this view.

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They deny that the increased consumption of soft drinks

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has made us fatter.

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Do you think that soft drinks contribute to obesity?

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No, I do not.

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In spite of all the evidence

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that they do contribute to obesity?

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Well, there is... The evidence...

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..says that obesity is caused by people consuming too many calories

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and not getting enough exercise to balance it out.

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Certainly, our full-calorie,

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regular soft drinks are a source of calories, so I guess if you're

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consuming too many calories,

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and watching too much television or not getting enough exercise,

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then you're going to have a problem.

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It's like saying because you go in the ocean,

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you're going to get bit by a shark.

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Well, people go in the ocean all the time and swim

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without getting bit by a shark,

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so there's a lot of work to try to establish causality

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and I don't know that I've seen any study that does that.

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With hindsight,

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it's easy to demonise the soda companies as making America fat.

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But at the time, when you talk to people like Hank,

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who worked at Coca-Cola, the decision was simple -

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it was a no-brainer.

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High-fructose corn syrup was going to bring costs down

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and the public seemed to love it.

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It was a very simple business decision,

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but one that just happened to have some very serious consequences.

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In 1994, the figures showed a frightening increase

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in people's weight at the very time that corn syrup

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in America's food and drinks had spiralled out of control.

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And so Lorna is going to basically hook up the patient.

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'So was corn syrup to blame for America's obesity?

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'At San Francisco's General Hospital,

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'the food scientist Dr Jean-Marc Schwarz is studying how sugars -

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'including corn syrup - are converted into fat.'

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What have we got here, Dr Schwarz? This is for Ken to drink?

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So he's going to drink that every hour today, all the way to 11pm.

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He will have one of those little shakes.

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'The shake is a liquefied version of Ken's normal daily diet -

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'but with a marker added, that enables Dr Schwarz to track

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'how the sugars affect different parts of Ken's body.'

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-How was that, Ken?

-My third one today.

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-Pretty good - I'm getting used to it.

-And how does it taste?

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-Is it sugary?

-Kind of sweet.

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A little different to Jamba juice, but kind of sweet.

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'With this apparatus, the team can trace exactly where in the body

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'the sugars in his food are metabolised

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'then converted into fat.'

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So here we go in the kitchen, and that's where we prep the diet.

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Actually, Marlene is here.

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She's getting the diet ready for the subject.

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-These are the drinks you give to your patients?

-Yes.

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'What Schwarz has found is that the sweetness of our food

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'contains one potentially toxic element associated with weight gain.

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'It's called fructose.'

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What we discovered was that some sugar will be converted to fat

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and some are not converted to fat and fructose is one sugar

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that really can be easily converted to fat.

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Fructose is in the two major sweeteners we consume -

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corn syrup and table sugar.

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It's this overall payload that is key.

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It's in almost everything that's sweet in the American diet

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and it's the sheer amount of it now being consumed

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that makes it so potentially poisonous.

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It's not like you...

0:22:330:22:35

Have a toxic effect like lead -

0:22:350:22:38

it's not comparable to lead or mercury -

0:22:380:22:42

but it's the quantity that makes it toxic.

0:22:420:22:44

The sugar industry claims that every scientific review of evidence has

0:22:440:22:48

concluded that sugar in itself is not linked to any lifestyle disease.

0:22:480:22:52

But the unpalatable fact is that Americans now eat 90lbs of added sugars a year -

0:22:520:22:59

more than twice what is regarded as safe.

0:22:590:23:02

You're interested in the effect that this payload of sugar

0:23:020:23:05

has on the body and the liver in particular.

0:23:050:23:07

Exactly. And I like to describe that as a tsunami -

0:23:070:23:12

you really have this huge load of sugar going to the liver and that's...

0:23:120:23:18

That's the impact,

0:23:180:23:20

not only on fat in the blood that may lead to cardiovascular disease,

0:23:200:23:25

but also maybe to fat accumulation in the liver,

0:23:250:23:30

which could have some impact for diabetes and other chronic disease.

0:23:300:23:34

The sugar industry claims that total calorific intake is to blame,

0:23:360:23:40

not just sugar.

0:23:400:23:42

The scientists are now beginning to think that there's something

0:23:430:23:46

very specific about fructose which accelerates obesity.

0:23:460:23:50

They found that it suppresses the action of a vital hormone

0:23:500:23:55

called leptin.

0:23:550:23:56

Leptin goes from your fat cells, sitting here,

0:23:590:24:02

goes to your brain and tells your brain you've had enough.

0:24:020:24:05

You don't need to eat that second piece of cheesecake.

0:24:050:24:08

'When you overload the liver with sugars,

0:24:080:24:10

'leptin simply stops working.

0:24:100:24:12

'You can carry on eating and your body won't ever say stop.'

0:24:120:24:17

It makes the brain think you're starving.

0:24:170:24:19

And now, what you have is a vicious cycle of consumption,

0:24:190:24:21

disease and addiction.

0:24:210:24:26

Which explains what's happened the world over.

0:24:260:24:30

'The sugar industry rejects the claim that any one ingredient

0:24:300:24:34

'can be responsible for weight gain,

0:24:340:24:37

'but if doctors Lustig and Schwarz are right,

0:24:370:24:39

'the effect of fructose on the liver

0:24:390:24:42

'is what's driving America's obesity.'

0:24:420:24:45

But how did we get fat in Britain?

0:24:510:24:55

In the late '70s, we were about to turn the same corner as America.

0:24:550:24:59

Here, products like Coca-Cola were sweetened mainly by sugar,

0:24:590:25:02

rather than corn syrup,

0:25:020:25:03

but the impact was just as critical.

0:25:030:25:06

Manufacturers wanted us to buy more

0:25:060:25:09

and had found a new way to make it happen...

0:25:090:25:12

That's my sister - she adores the kids.

0:25:130:25:17

It was called snacking,

0:25:170:25:18

and it was all about inventing new times of the day to eat

0:25:180:25:21

and eating one kind of snack in particular - sugary treats.

0:25:210:25:25

Milky Way:

0:25:250:25:29

In the '70s, eating between meals was still frowned upon.

0:25:310:25:34

But the food industry was working hard to change that.

0:25:360:25:39

The snack society is threatening the old style of eating at home.

0:25:420:25:46

On Sundays, food is still a family affair.

0:25:460:25:49

During the week, the young, with money in their pockets,

0:25:490:25:52

rely less and less on home cooking.

0:25:520:25:54

Britain's calorie intake went up as we found new times

0:25:570:26:02

and new places to eat.

0:26:020:26:04

The brilliance of this idea for the food industry was that

0:26:050:26:08

it moved food beyond the meal table and into what had always been

0:26:080:26:12

for them the empty times of the day between meals.

0:26:120:26:16

It literally created a gap in the market.

0:26:160:26:19

This clever little concept is now worth £6 billion a year.

0:26:190:26:24

The food industry say it's just following a trend.

0:26:240:26:28

We lead busy lives, we have to graze from time to time

0:26:300:26:34

and what the food industry has done

0:26:340:26:37

is provide nutritious products

0:26:370:26:39

that consumers can take advantage of on the move

0:26:390:26:42

that match those busy lifestyles.

0:26:420:26:45

Professor Philip James was one of the first to identify obesity

0:26:450:26:48

as a serious medical issue.

0:26:480:26:51

The increase in snacking is something that we continue

0:26:520:26:58

not to focus on and it's a major deficiency, I think.

0:26:580:27:02

But if you go to the industry, they love it,

0:27:020:27:05

because that's a huge burgeoning part of their profit.

0:27:050:27:09

Snacks didn't just change when we ate,

0:27:120:27:15

they also increased our overall intake of sugar.

0:27:150:27:19

# A finger of Fudge is just enough to give your kids a treat... #

0:27:190:27:23

Well, there were a series of products which were...

0:27:230:27:25

Let's call them bite-size, they were just small.

0:27:250:27:28

The number of products like that which were, I guess, something you could just eat

0:27:280:27:34

and be quite nice to eat, but they weren't filling.

0:27:340:27:36

Advertising executive Paul Simons was one of those who helped develop our taste for treats.

0:27:360:27:42

# A finger of Fudge is just enough to give your kids a treat. #

0:27:420:27:46

The key words in that ad being "just enough".

0:27:460:27:49

Just enough, yes. Just enough.

0:27:490:27:51

So, it's just picking that moment that many people do

0:27:510:27:55

and putting that product into that moment.

0:27:550:27:58

The march of sugar was aided by a brand-new high-tech arrival

0:27:580:28:01

to British kitchens - the freezer.

0:28:010:28:04

Paul Simons began visiting restaurants

0:28:040:28:06

looking for luxury desserts

0:28:060:28:08

that could be turned into frozen products.

0:28:080:28:10

If people are eating Black Forest gateau, let's say,

0:28:100:28:14

when they go out for supper, dinner,

0:28:140:28:17

well, why not make something like that that you can freeze,

0:28:170:28:20

because then you can have it when you want it.

0:28:200:28:22

So it was basically going out, seeing what people were eating

0:28:220:28:25

-and thinking, "We can stick that in the freezer".

-Exactly.

0:28:250:28:28

We can make that and there will be millions of people who'll buy it.

0:28:280:28:31

The nation's tables were transformed.

0:28:330:28:37

Dishes like Black Forest gateau were no longer

0:28:370:28:39

just for special occasions, but every day.

0:28:390:28:42

And the number of calories being consumed went up dramatically - processed food had arrived.

0:28:420:28:48

Anything that was more difficult to make at home,

0:28:480:28:51

that was a bit more complicated, that you could produce in a mass sense and freeze,

0:28:510:28:56

that was our job - that's what we did for a living.

0:28:560:29:00

The downside was that no-one knew what was in pre-prepared meals.

0:29:000:29:04

But the reality was that levels of sugar

0:29:040:29:07

and salt consumption were rising.

0:29:070:29:10

But Britain's love affair with American eating habits

0:29:110:29:14

was only just beginning.

0:29:140:29:16

In 1974, a new kind of experience had touched down in Britain

0:29:160:29:21

that would seize the imagination of every child in the country.

0:29:210:29:26

For my 10th birthday, I was brought here,

0:29:260:29:29

to Leicester Square in London, to see Star Wars.

0:29:290:29:32

It was the most exciting day of my life.

0:29:320:29:34

But to top that day, I was taken to something even more extraordinary -

0:29:340:29:38

it looked like something beamed down from outer space

0:29:380:29:41

and it was bright orange and it was called...

0:29:410:29:44

McDonald's.

0:29:440:29:46

In the next 20 years, high street fast food outlets quadrupled.

0:29:470:29:51

and obesity expert Professor Philip James

0:29:510:29:54

began to notice something peculiar.

0:29:540:29:57

Suddenly, the movement of obesity, you could see it as we got

0:29:590:30:04

bits of figures from different surveys - it was going up.

0:30:040:30:07

And if you say, "Why didn't we intervene earlier?"

0:30:070:30:11

you bet we should have done.

0:30:110:30:13

But I would have liked to have a bit more data.

0:30:130:30:16

Now we're beginning to get this information.

0:30:160:30:19

Now we can begin to operate, but we've been very slow.

0:30:190:30:23

In America, as in Britain, people were starting to put on weight

0:30:330:30:36

but nobody knew why, or even IF it mattered.

0:30:360:30:40

In the '70s, obesity wasn't even an issue.

0:30:440:30:46

The big health concern was heart disease

0:30:460:30:49

and it boiled down to one simple question - what causes it?

0:30:490:30:53

Sugar or fat?

0:30:530:30:56

This man - Ancel Keys - claimed he had the answer to heart disease.

0:31:060:31:11

His theory had a decisive impact on what we would all eat,

0:31:110:31:14

but it also had a devastating side-effect - creating the conditions for obesity.

0:31:140:31:21

He was already pretty famous here in America

0:31:210:31:23

because he was the originator, the inventor of the K Ration.

0:31:230:31:28

The K Ration was a way of getting 12,000 calories

0:31:280:31:31

in a very small, compact little box that soldiers during World War II

0:31:310:31:36

could carry with them as sustenance during battle.

0:31:360:31:41

The K Ration contained a lot of very sweet food like chocolate,

0:31:430:31:47

because Keys believed sugar was energy -

0:31:470:31:50

never for one moment that it could be harmful.

0:31:500:31:53

Keys' theory was that fat alone caused heart disease -

0:31:560:32:00

an idea he picked up in Britain.

0:32:000:32:02

In 1952, Keys did a sabbatical in England,

0:32:060:32:12

where he saw the epidemic of heart disease himself,

0:32:120:32:17

and correlated it with the enormously poor British diet.

0:32:170:32:20

Fish and chips, et cetera. You know what I'm talking about.

0:32:200:32:24

And decided that saturated fat had to be the culprit.

0:32:240:32:28

And he actually said that back in the '50s, before he did any studies.

0:32:280:32:32

And he spent the next 50 years attempting to prove himself right.

0:32:320:32:38

Keys's view on fat as the enemy became the orthodoxy,

0:32:380:32:41

widely accepted, not least by the food industry.

0:32:410:32:45

But on this side of the Atlantic, one man disagreed.

0:32:450:32:49

Whilst Keys's argument was sweeping all before it,

0:32:500:32:53

here in Britain, one lone voice contested what he was seeing.

0:32:530:32:58

In 1972, an academic called John Yudkin published a small

0:32:580:33:03

but very important book.

0:33:030:33:04

It was called Pure, White and Deadly.

0:33:040:33:07

Yudkin was an outspoken nutritionist who thought, controversially,

0:33:090:33:14

that sugar was to blame for heart disease, not fat.

0:33:140:33:16

But his views were years ahead of their time.

0:33:160:33:20

In front of us, day by day,

0:33:200:33:23

increasingly more and more very tempting foods are put.

0:33:230:33:27

So it's really unfair to use the word "greedy".

0:33:280:33:31

This makes people feel guilty.

0:33:310:33:32

And this is why they resist, many of them, dieting.

0:33:320:33:34

Yudkin's belief in the harm done by sugar

0:33:340:33:37

was diametrically opposed to Keys's view.

0:33:370:33:40

Professor John Yudkin, who I used to work with

0:33:400:33:43

when I was a young scientist, said, "Well, wait a minute.

0:33:430:33:47

"There may be other things in the diet.

0:33:470:33:49

"Let's consider sugar as well as the other things."

0:33:490:33:51

Dr Richard Bruckdorfer worked closely with Yudkin on his nutritional research.

0:33:530:33:57

He pointed out that sucrose is something which only

0:34:000:34:03

came in our diet about eight generations previously,

0:34:030:34:07

and was a sort of interloper into the British diet.

0:34:070:34:11

And that was probably the biggest change that had taken place over the last two centuries.

0:34:110:34:15

But Yudkin wasn't listened to, and he had made an enemy.

0:34:150:34:20

There was a huge lobby from industry, particularly

0:34:220:34:25

from the British sugar industry and the American sugar industry,

0:34:250:34:28

which he complained bitterly about, that he thought

0:34:280:34:31

were subverting some of his ideas because it wasn't convenient to them.

0:34:310:34:36

The battle over sugar and fat got personal.

0:34:370:34:40

Yudkin's ideas were rubbished by his rival, Ancel Keys,

0:34:400:34:44

and Yudkin's work was forgotten.

0:34:440:34:46

Keys won the battle. Yudkin was thrown under the bus. And...

0:34:470:34:52

In what way was he thrown under the bus?

0:34:520:34:54

Well, he was discredited by numerous societies,

0:34:540:34:58

basically saying that he did not have the data

0:34:580:35:01

to make his claims about the importance of sugar.

0:35:010:35:04

It was a disaster for Yudkin, and the rest of us.

0:35:060:35:10

Sugar had got off scot-free, and as a result,

0:35:100:35:13

we were now free to consume ever-greater amounts,

0:35:130:35:16

without any fear of the consequences.

0:35:160:35:19

I think Yudkin was a prophet. I have such respect for him.

0:35:190:35:24

If you read "Pure, White And Deadly," it's all there.

0:35:250:35:29

And for him to have been discredited as he had been

0:35:290:35:33

was a real disservice not just to him, but to society.

0:35:330:35:36

The obesity crisis we face today is in part caused by

0:35:470:35:52

our ignoring Yudkin's warnings about sugar.

0:35:520:35:54

We carried on eating sugar with no idea of the dangers.

0:35:540:35:58

And what's more, the industry developed a wave of new sweet foods,

0:36:020:36:06

perfectly formulated to appeal to our insatiable appetites.

0:36:060:36:10

OK, Sam, so we'll come through to the scanner, there.

0:36:120:36:15

For those who study the causes of obesity,

0:36:160:36:19

the focus has now moved to the brain.

0:36:190:36:22

We're going to put you in the scanner.

0:36:220:36:25

Here in the UK, Dr Tony Goldstone is researching how the mind reacts to sweet foods.

0:36:250:36:30

His subject, Samantha, is on a waiting list

0:36:310:36:34

to have a gastric band operation to help her lose weight.

0:36:340:36:38

I think every diet that I've tried, obviously, has failed.

0:36:380:36:41

I've tried hard, but no, they've all failed.

0:36:410:36:46

But I do try. I do try to keep to fruits, I do eat fruit.

0:36:460:36:51

With the surgery, what's your kind of ideal?

0:36:510:36:55

Erm... To be more active.

0:36:550:36:59

To be more confident.

0:37:000:37:02

And to go out and to spend more time with my kids.

0:37:020:37:05

OK, Samantha, you're going to see some images on the screen, now.

0:37:090:37:13

-And just rate the images accordingly, OK?

-'OK.'

0:37:130:37:17

The researchers show her pictures of high-calorie food,

0:37:220:37:26

like chocolate cake and pizza, and healthy food, like vegetables and salad.

0:37:260:37:30

The calorie level of the food has a direct bearing on which part of the brain is activated.

0:37:300:37:36

Foods that are high in fat and sugar taste good,

0:37:360:37:40

so we know that they activate brain reward systems,

0:37:400:37:43

even when we show pictures. Or if we just had a word, "Chocolate",

0:37:430:37:46

very similar bits of the brain would light up.

0:37:460:37:50

-Take your time, cos you've been lying down.

-Yeah.

0:37:560:37:58

So, these are Sam's results. As you can see,

0:37:580:38:00

the high-calorie foods are pretty well all five,

0:38:000:38:04

the low-calories score just over three.

0:38:040:38:07

It shows which parts of the brain react when Samantha sees food.

0:38:070:38:11

Dr Goldstone is interested in one area in particular.

0:38:110:38:16

We have an area here called the nucleus acccumbens,

0:38:160:38:20

and that's an area that's involved in the drive and motivation to have reward.

0:38:200:38:24

And the area we are particularly interested in, also,

0:38:240:38:27

is the orbitofrontal cortex, that's here on either side,

0:38:270:38:30

just above the eyes.

0:38:300:38:32

And that's an area that seems to encode how rewarding we find food.

0:38:320:38:36

So we find, for example, that if people rate things as more tasty

0:38:360:38:39

or more appealing, you get more activation in that area.

0:38:390:38:42

Dr Goldstone's work is nothing less than decoding obesity,

0:38:420:38:46

discovering precisely where in the brain appetite is triggered.

0:38:460:38:50

How tasty the food is, how good it looks,

0:38:500:38:53

even what it sounds like, even what the crunch is like.

0:38:530:38:56

So, all these different factors, the type of food,

0:38:560:38:58

what our psychological make-up is,

0:38:580:39:00

and these external signals from the rest of the body,

0:39:000:39:03

all meet together somewhere. Not in our big toe - in our brains.

0:39:030:39:06

And that's where they integrate to alter whether we actually reach out

0:39:060:39:10

and buy something, or choose it in the shop or the restaurant or at home.

0:39:100:39:13

So, Tony, what you're looking at is an incredibly complex interaction

0:39:130:39:18

of things within the brain every time you just see, smell some food.

0:39:180:39:22

That's obviously what the food industry spends a lot of time developing.

0:39:220:39:26

The way the brain stimulates appetite is the holy grail

0:39:310:39:35

for both the food industry wanting to sell more food,

0:39:350:39:38

and the scientists fighting obesity.

0:39:380:39:41

Dr David Kessler was once head of the all-powerful

0:39:450:39:49

US Food And Drug Administration.

0:39:490:39:51

He is now highly critical of the food industry he once regulated.

0:39:510:39:55

It could be tobacco, it could be illegal drugs, it could be sex,

0:39:580:40:03

it could be gambling. But what's the most socially acceptable cue,

0:40:030:40:08

certainly in our countries?

0:40:080:40:11

I mean, it's food. And it's everywhere.

0:40:110:40:13

You can't walk more than 100 feet in the United States

0:40:150:40:19

and not be cued with some signal that food is available.

0:40:190:40:25

So, what's going on,

0:40:250:40:28

is my brain is constantly being activated by these cues.

0:40:280:40:32

Here's the fish place, here's the taco place,

0:40:330:40:38

-here's the...

-Mexican.

-..Mexican place.

-Yeah.

0:40:380:40:41

And, I'm not even thinking about food.

0:40:410:40:44

The food industry denies that it exploits neuroscience.

0:40:440:40:48

But Kessler believes some foods are designed to create

0:40:480:40:52

what neurologists call a hedonic response.

0:40:520:40:54

Hedonic means highly pleasurable.

0:40:540:40:59

It gives you this momentary bliss.

0:40:590:41:03

So, when you're eating food that is highly hedonic,

0:41:030:41:06

it sort of takes over your brain.

0:41:060:41:08

The problem is, this highly pleasurable food

0:41:080:41:12

is often high in sugar, highly processed, and highly fattening.

0:41:120:41:16

Here's the way America eats. Here is a bowl of chicken.

0:41:160:41:20

There are nutritional components in it,

0:41:200:41:23

but it's become so highly processed, so stimulating.

0:41:230:41:26

I mean, you can almost sense,

0:41:260:41:29

just by smelling it, how overpowering it is.

0:41:290:41:34

Dr Kessler's findings suggest that the pleasure some people get

0:41:430:41:46

from eating these foods is overpowering.

0:41:460:41:50

It takes the brain prisoner.

0:41:500:41:52

Not everybody. But for people who have a hard time controlling their weight,

0:41:540:41:57

their brains are being hijacked by these highly palatable foods.

0:41:570:42:02

When you put it in your mouth, you have sensors,

0:42:020:42:06

receptors, that are hard-wired to the emotional core of your brain.

0:42:060:42:12

So the circuits that are involved, the neural circuits,

0:42:120:42:14

the learning, memory, habit and motivation circuits

0:42:140:42:17

that are being activated are the same circuits that are involved in addiction.

0:42:170:42:23

The idea that certain foods can be addictive is highly controversial.

0:42:260:42:30

The food industry wholly denies that foods can make addicts out of consumers.

0:42:300:42:35

The number one reason we like to eat foods or beverages

0:42:370:42:44

is because of how they taste, and what you think tastes good

0:42:440:42:47

and you like to eat or have a craving for may be different

0:42:470:42:50

than I would choose, whether it's apples or grilled chicken,

0:42:500:42:53

or a soft drink or a piece of chocolate cake.

0:42:530:42:55

So I think we need to make clear there's a big difference

0:42:550:42:58

between liking to eat something because it tastes good and being addicted to it.

0:42:580:43:03

Do you think that the food manufacturers

0:43:030:43:05

know what they're doing by producing hedonic food?

0:43:050:43:08

They knew that people come back for more.

0:43:080:43:11

-How...?

-Did they understand the neuroscience? No.

0:43:110:43:17

But they learned experientially what worked.

0:43:170:43:21

The food industry has always used the position with regard to obesity

0:43:210:43:26

that it is the responsibility of the individual to curb their eating.

0:43:260:43:31

Would you think that's a fair defence?

0:43:310:43:33

I don't think it's fair just to talk about personal responsibility

0:43:330:43:40

and not corporate responsibility.

0:43:400:43:42

It certainly hasn't been fair to people who have

0:43:420:43:48

this wanting, this problem controlling their eating.

0:43:480:43:52

If Kessler's neuroscience is right, overeating is not down to greed.

0:43:560:44:01

The food industry could also bear a crucial part

0:44:010:44:04

of the blame for the obesity epidemic.

0:44:040:44:06

The US government had their own part to play in the obesity crisis,

0:44:170:44:21

back in the '70s when the first warnings came.

0:44:210:44:24

But in trying to fix it, they made it worse.

0:44:240:44:27

In 1977, this man, George McGovern,

0:44:310:44:35

was set the task of changing American eating habits.

0:44:350:44:40

Beaten by Nixon in the 1972 presidential election,

0:44:400:44:42

McGovern threw himself into work for a committee

0:44:420:44:46

to create the first-ever set of dietary guidelines for Americans.

0:44:460:44:50

It would go disastrously wrong.

0:44:500:44:53

Nick Mottern was the committee's researcher.

0:44:570:44:59

I was hired by the committee to write a report

0:45:030:45:07

that would be like the Surgeon General's report on smoking.

0:45:070:45:12

We gathered, I guess, probably half a dozen nutritionists in the country

0:45:120:45:17

who were willing to talk about eating less fat, eating less sugar, eating less meat.

0:45:170:45:24

The report recommended moderate reductions in fat, salt and sugar.

0:45:260:45:31

But when it hit the press, the food industry was incensed.

0:45:310:45:35

I don't think that McGovern anticipated the kind of kickback

0:45:360:45:41

from the food industry that he got on that.

0:45:410:45:45

Because we had held hearings,

0:45:450:45:47

it was clear that the science was on our side in terms of our recommendations.

0:45:470:45:51

The food industry, and the sugar lobby in particular,

0:45:510:45:55

brought its muscle to bear to bury the report.

0:45:550:45:58

This is an incredible letter that you've got here

0:45:580:46:01

from The Sugar Association,

0:46:010:46:04

and it says in it that your suppositions are false.

0:46:040:46:08

That there's no evidence for what you're saying.

0:46:080:46:11

And there's two lines in particular that are incredible.

0:46:110:46:14

It says, "For several years now,

0:46:140:46:15

"the sugar industry has had to live with two myths.

0:46:150:46:19

"One, that consumption is increasing annually,

0:46:190:46:23

"and secondly, that consumption of sugar is directly responsible for death-dealing maladies."

0:46:230:46:30

What they say here is "both suppositions are false."

0:46:300:46:35

What do you think about that?

0:46:350:46:37

Well, possibly it could have been written by the same people

0:46:370:46:41

who wrote letters for the tobacco industry, protecting their product.

0:46:410:46:44

It worked.

0:46:490:46:51

In the media coverage in the weeks after the report was published,

0:46:510:46:54

sugar was barely mentioned.

0:46:540:46:56

Instead, reducing fat

0:46:570:46:59

became the concession the food industry was willing to make,

0:46:590:47:03

just as Ancel Keys had advocated years before.

0:47:030:47:06

The science historian Gary Taubes says this was pivotal moment.

0:47:120:47:17

They had these hearings.

0:47:190:47:20

One of the staff members who put together this report said that

0:47:200:47:25

after the hearing, he walks out, an industry analyst walks out with him,

0:47:250:47:28

and basically puts his arm round his shoulder and says,

0:47:280:47:30

"I don't know what you think is going to happen, but if you think people

0:47:300:47:34

"are going to start eating more broccoli and more kale and spinach

0:47:340:47:38

"because you've now put together dietary goals, you're crazy.

0:47:380:47:41

"What you've said is people should eat less fat,

0:47:410:47:43

"so the industry is going to jump on this and create low-fat products

0:47:430:47:46

"and they're going to label them as heart-healthy or whatever,

0:47:460:47:49

"and they're going to be able to carve out a portion of the market for their new products,

0:47:490:47:53

"and everyone else is going to have to play catch-up. And that's what they're going to do.

0:47:530:47:57

"And the next thing you know, they're going to have shelf after shelf

0:47:570:48:00

"in the supermarket of junk foods that claim to be low-fat

0:48:000:48:03

"and good for your heart," and that's exactly what happened.

0:48:030:48:06

Overnight, a whole new type of food was invented - low-fat.

0:48:100:48:14

Sold as much better for us, or so we were told.

0:48:140:48:18

The food industry had turned the attack on unhealthy food into a business opportunity.

0:48:180:48:23

It was genius.

0:48:230:48:25

But the problem was flavour.

0:48:260:48:29

Dr Alice Pegg is a food scientist

0:48:290:48:31

whose job is to design lower-fat foods.

0:48:310:48:34

Her challenge is to replicate the taste fat brings

0:48:340:48:37

to foods like mayonnaise.

0:48:370:48:40

-Mm, good.

-Does it taste like mayonnaise? THEY LAUGH

0:48:420:48:45

It's good, because it's 80% fat, isn't it? 80% fat.

0:48:450:48:50

-The fat tastes good.

-Mm-hmm.

0:48:500:48:52

Because fat tends to stay in the mouth.

0:48:520:48:54

If you think about it, fat and water don't mix,

0:48:540:48:56

so when you swallow, some of the fat remains in the mouth.

0:48:560:48:59

And you'll tend to have flavours that are dissolved in the fat,

0:48:590:49:03

-and so you keep getting a lingering flavour of the thing you like.

-Wow.

0:49:030:49:07

When you're replacing fat and you're producing something low-fat,

0:49:070:49:10

I mean, do you have to replace it with calories?

0:49:100:49:12

You know, what are you replacing it with?

0:49:120:49:15

You really have to completely reformulate the food.

0:49:150:49:18

When the low-fat first came out,

0:49:180:49:21

it was a case of just taking the fat out being the issue,

0:49:210:49:24

NOT to do with how many calories we're eating.

0:49:240:49:26

And therefore, it didn't matter so much what you were putting in.

0:49:260:49:30

But it DID matter when obesity became an issue.

0:49:320:49:35

The trouble was that many manufacturers replaced fat with - guess what - sugar.

0:49:350:49:40

The problem is, when you take the fat out of the recipe,

0:49:410:49:44

food tastes like cardboard.

0:49:440:49:47

No-one would ever eat another processed food again

0:49:470:49:50

if the fat was taken out.

0:49:500:49:52

Low-fat sucks.

0:49:520:49:54

Ask any kid if they'll drink skim milk and the answer is, "Absolutely not."

0:49:540:49:57

But if you put chocolate in it, that's a different story.

0:49:570:50:01

Indeed, that's exactly what the entire food industry did.

0:50:010:50:05

They took the fat out and they added the sugar in.

0:50:050:50:08

Any potential benefit from the lower level of fat was cancelled out by this increase in sugar.

0:50:090:50:15

'There was a theory, actually,

0:50:150:50:17

'that if a food didn't have a fat in it,'

0:50:170:50:19

it couldn't make you fat.

0:50:190:50:21

This was one of the many theories that sort of got embraced with the low-fat dogma.

0:50:210:50:25

And that meant you could drink all these sodas,

0:50:250:50:28

you could drink these fruit juices, they couldn't make you fat.

0:50:280:50:31

TANNOY: 'Attention, shoppers.

0:50:330:50:34

'Reduced-fat Snackwell's Creme Sandwich Cookies

0:50:340:50:37

'have just arrived in aisle three.

0:50:370:50:38

'That's aisle three.'

0:50:380:50:41

Of all the low-fat success stories, Snackwell's was the most famous.

0:50:410:50:45

A cookie marketed at people trying to reduce their fat intake.

0:50:450:50:49

-EMPLOYEE:

-..you eat 'em! Wa-a-ah!

0:50:490:50:51

What a creamy way to cut the fat.

0:50:510:50:53

Snackwell's Creme Sandwich Cookies - so good!

0:50:530:50:56

They flew off the shelves.

0:50:560:50:58

There would be huge lines of people waiting when the truck arrived

0:50:580:51:03

to deliver the boxes to grocery stores.

0:51:030:51:05

It was an incredible phenomenon.

0:51:050:51:07

Within three years of its launch,

0:51:070:51:10

annual sales were worth half-a-billion dollars.

0:51:100:51:13

But the low-fat label didn't mean it wasn't fattening.

0:51:130:51:17

People, when they ate the low-fat products,

0:51:170:51:19

thought that they didn't have any calories in them.

0:51:190:51:21

The sign, "Low-fat,"

0:51:210:51:23

indicated to a lot of people that you could just eat as much as you want, and you could eat BOXES of them,

0:51:230:51:29

and they wouldn't have any calorie effect.

0:51:290:51:33

And so, that also was a stimulus to eat more.

0:51:330:51:36

Snackwell's was a marketing triumph,

0:51:390:51:42

but a disaster for America's waistline.

0:51:420:51:45

By the time anyone began to ask if it was a good thing to replace fat with sugar,

0:51:480:51:52

it was too late.

0:51:520:51:55

If fat's the cause...

0:51:570:51:59

..that's a good thing to do.

0:52:000:52:02

If sugar is the cause,

0:52:020:52:04

that's a disastrous thing to do.

0:52:040:52:06

And I think that over the last 30 years, we've answered the question.

0:52:060:52:11

By 2000, here in Washington, the tide was turning.

0:52:180:52:22

Public health specialists from the new science of obesity

0:52:220:52:26

were now talking about sugar.

0:52:260:52:28

And the food corporations were getting very nervy.

0:52:280:52:32

The food industry has one of the most powerful lobbies here in Washington.

0:52:340:52:38

They spend millions every year, so as the science of obesity grew up and became better understood,

0:52:380:52:44

that lobby was working overtime.

0:52:440:52:46

With the spotlight on sugar,

0:52:460:52:49

very powerful interests got to work the defend it.

0:52:490:52:51

2003 - Britain and America were assembling forces to invade Iraq.

0:52:530:52:59

But some of Washington's most powerful politicians

0:52:590:53:02

had another crisis on their minds.

0:53:020:53:05

TANKS TRUNDLE

0:53:060:53:08

In Geneva,

0:53:080:53:09

the World Health Organisation was about to issue a report

0:53:090:53:12

that set global limits on the amount of sugar in our diet.

0:53:120:53:16

It was time for the sugar lobby to mobilise its own tanks.

0:53:160:53:20

The sugar industry went berserk.

0:53:220:53:23

They got their lobbyists to write a big position paper

0:53:240:53:28

to argue with the World Health Organisation that they shouldn't do this.

0:53:280:53:33

The Sugar Association wrote direct to the WHO's director general,

0:53:360:53:41

threatening the organisation's 406 million of US government funding.

0:53:410:53:47

They forced the Department of Health and Human Services

0:53:530:53:57

to threaten the World Health Organisation with withdrawing funding from it

0:53:570:54:03

if they didn't lighten up on that recommendation.

0:54:030:54:06

The US Health Secretary himself flew to Geneva

0:54:080:54:11

to put the sugar industry's case in person.

0:54:110:54:14

The WHO never did make that recommendation.

0:54:160:54:19

What happened in Geneva shows how powerful the food industry really is.

0:54:290:54:33

But today, with a third of American adults now classed as obese,

0:54:370:54:42

the food industry is at last offering to change.

0:54:420:54:45

All the time, science is changing,

0:54:450:54:47

and how they're thinking about how to tackle the problem is changing.

0:54:470:54:50

This is an industry which takes, you know, with its scale,

0:54:500:54:54

takes its responsibilities very, very seriously,

0:54:540:54:56

and has already done an awful lot, and will continue to do so.

0:54:560:54:59

And we know that there's real commitment behind us playing our full part in public health.

0:54:590:55:04

The former Coca-Cola executive Hank Cardello

0:55:050:55:09

now has his own consultancy aimed at getting corporations to tackle obesity.

0:55:090:55:13

The beauty, if you can look at the silver lining

0:55:150:55:19

in the challenge of obesity, is that, even though it's a problem,

0:55:190:55:24

it creates a galvanising effect.

0:55:240:55:27

Companies need to make money,

0:55:270:55:29

and consumers need to eat food that is convenient and tastes good,

0:55:290:55:34

and from the public health perspective, we need products that are healthier.

0:55:340:55:37

And all those need to come together.

0:55:370:55:39

This is a dilemma for the food companies.

0:55:410:55:43

While obesity has ballooned, so have profits.

0:55:440:55:48

Healthier food might be good PR, but it's a commercial gamble.

0:55:480:55:52

The men who made us fat revolutionised what we eat.

0:56:050:56:08

What they did in the '70s gave us sweeter food, and too much of it...

0:56:100:56:15

led to one man's warnings being ignored...

0:56:150:56:19

while another gave the risks in sugar a clean bill of health.

0:56:190:56:23

And another man's work left us so-called low-fat food,

0:56:240:56:28

with hidden calories where we least expected them.

0:56:280:56:31

Theirs was a disastrous legacy.

0:56:310:56:34

In Britain,

0:56:390:56:40

we're still struggling to cope with our inheritance from these men.

0:56:400:56:44

The number of obese adults has TREBLED since the 1980s.

0:56:440:56:47

Obesity is costing the NHS over £4 billion a year.

0:56:470:56:52

It's astonishing to find such a clear link between a few politicians

0:56:540:56:58

and thinkers in '70s America and our present crisis.

0:56:580:57:02

The question is not why there are so many fat people,

0:57:050:57:08

so many obese people, it's why there are thin people

0:57:080:57:12

in an environment where it's leading us all to be obese.

0:57:120:57:16

It's pretty difficult to cope in this obesity epidemic

0:57:180:57:23

with the prevailing conditions.

0:57:230:57:25

And everybody always says to you that it's all your own fault.

0:57:250:57:28

Forget it. The evidence is the exact contrary.

0:57:280:57:32

Next week, I go on the trail of the men who supersized

0:57:320:57:36

our appetites in the quest for profits.

0:57:360:57:39

He realised that if he increased the portions, that he could sell more.

0:57:390:57:43

Because people didn't like the idea of going back for two.

0:57:430:57:47

They changed the rules,

0:57:470:57:49

because then everyone started running around thinking, "We've got to make a bigger bar."

0:57:490:57:53

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