The show that shocked Britain into adopting healthier habits, Eat To Save Your Life, is about to be aired on Network Ten. Its host Jamie Oliver delivers the grim facts.
An autopsy of an obese man is performed on the show. Do you think people need to be shocked into realising how bad the state of our health is?
I certainly found it shocking and so did the guys we had in the studio. I think it’s very easy to just eat and eat and not think about the consequences, but when you actually see the damage that’s done, it makes you think twice.
Thin people can still have poor diets — do you address that issue on the show?
Yeah, we do. We brought together a variety of people with many different diet issues and yes, of course, you can be thin but still have real problems in store for you if you don’t eat a balanced diet.
You are doing a lot of work like this — does it still alarm you how badly we eat?
It does, yes. I’m doing a program at the moment — I hope you’ll see it this year or early next year — and we’ve got people who eat dozens of bags of crisps every day, we’ve got people who have never cooked a decent meal for themselves in their lives because they’ve been living off takeaways and microwave meals.
What do you and your family do to ensure you don’t fall into the obesity trap?
Well, we’re lucky that the girls have always had a wide variety of foods since they were babies, so it’s easy to get them to eat fruit and veg because they’ve always loved it. They have the odd treat, of course, like pizza or something like that, but they’re generally pretty good.
What are the most common mistakes we make about food?
We buy too much and then we throw half of it away. Most people don’t know how to shop any more and particularly now, when money is a bit tight, I think the food shop needs to go further. You can be clever with it — get three meals out of a free-range roast chicken or a kilo of good mince.
As a chef, does it take a lot for you not to stack on weight?
I try to be careful, but I’m also quite active, so I’ve stayed more or less the same weight for the last few years now.
Jamie Oliver’s Eat To Save Your Life airs on Network Ten, Wednesday, July 16 at 9.30pm.
For more of this interview, see this week’s Woman’s Day (on sale July 7).
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