Genre:
Internet applications, Lifestyle, Mobile applications
Owner:
Cheetah Television
Scheduling:
Weekly
Time slot:
Prime time
Produced in 1 territory:
United Kingdom
The world has gone diet mad, more so than ever before. A new celebrity diet every other week, slimming products, dieting surgery and liposuction, extreme treatments… we just can’t get enough of them. We hate fat, we blame skinny, we embrace food scares and fads – and all along, bombarded by a myriad of confusing messages.
Faddy foods, slimming products, diet surgery and extreme weight loss regimes, the UK has gone diet mad. But alongside every new celeb diet launch the nation is continually bombarded with confusing food scares and health warnings about the serious dangers of being superslim, so it’s no wonder the UK’s relationship with food is becoming increasingly dysfunctional. Countless people are heading towards obesity, with a diet reliant on junk and convenience food while many others are eating too little in a quest to get a celebrity ‘size zero’ body.
Supersize vs Superskinny is the ultimate magazine show about food, weight and body image. Each hour-long programme features a short diet swap between two contributors – both of whom have been medically assessed prior to filming - with wildly contrasting eating habits. The show sees a superskinny undereater swap diet and lifestyle with an overweight overeater. The participants couldn’t be more different in their attitudes towards food, but discover they are both putting their health in danger with their current diet and lifestyle.
The aim of the five day swap is to make them realise they both have a dysfunctional relationship with food – that eating too much is just as bad as undereating. The swap is designed to kick start a whole new regime of balanced and healthy eating that is meant to re-educate them and transform their relationship with food and weight.
After the swap, the contributors both embark on a medically supervised healthy eating regime. At the end we discover if the two contributors have changed their bad eating habits for good. Alongside the diet swap, the series also examines the mine field of issues around weight, food and body image with a series of consumer related strands to help us get the UK’s relationship with food back in perspective.
In each weekly edition, UK journalist Anna Richardson also immerses herself in the world of faddy and celebrity dieting, trying out some of its most radical regimes to expose some uncomfortable truths about the quest for size zero. Plus world-renowned nutritionist Gillian McKeith embarks on a mission to help reduce the size of the nation’s rears. There isn’t a woman out there who doesn’t want a firmer, smaller, tinier bottom – so what can you do to stop yours growing out of control? In this cross-series strand Gillian McKeith takes on Britain’s Biggest Bottoms – over 100 of the very largest – and teach us everything we need to know to achieve the perfect slim bum.