Matthew Pollock, “Adam Ruins Everything (Season 2, Episode 2: Adam Ruins Weight Loss)” (2017)
A very timely episode in the second season of the educational comedy documentary series “Adam Ruins Everything”, this one applies the hatchet quite severely (even if in a light-hearted way) to popular misconceptions about the best way to lose weight and to keep it off, and how governments, media and corporations collude to profit from people’s concerns and anguish about losing weight, dieting and exercise, and maintaining low body weight. Tackling three major myths, host Adam Conover reveals that low-fat diets can make people fatter, that counting calories is a waste of time and reveals misunderstanding about what calories measure, and that reality TV shows like “The Biggest Loser”, in which contestants undergo gruelling exercise regimes in boot-camp environments, actually don’t help the people who participate in them.
Perhaps the most informative segment is the first segment in which Conover reveals that beliefs that eating fat will lead to your being fat are based on bad and deceitful science, and that the consumption of low-fat foods and beverages is the culprit because these are usually laden with sugar. Removing fat from food results in it becoming bland in taste so companies compensate by adding large amounts of sugar. A scientist in the 1960s – 70s who tried to alert governments and their agencies, the news media and the public to his findings that sugar was to blame for increasing weight gain in Americans ended up being persecuted by the food industry and being ultimately shunned. What happened to him after his virtual ostracism is unknown. His work languished in obscurity until it was revived decades later after researchers began to discover links between sugar consumption and health conditions such as heart disease and obesity.
Counting calories gets a shellacking as individual people vary greatly in their daily calories requirements and there is no one generic ideal figure that people can adhere to as the level below which they can feel safe and keep their weight down. Even individual pieces of the same food and in the same or similar sizes can contain different levels of calories. Reality TV shows come in for criticism for preying on people’s insecurities about their weight and making spurious promises about helping people to lose huge amounts of weight quickly and to keep it all off.
While the slapstick is very silly and childish, the episode does a good job of presenting its three cases. To counter the silliness, an expert on weight loss and obesity, Dr Kevin Hall, comes on board to explain that, of 14 “The Biggest Loser” contestants he studied, 80% regained their lost weight. Of even more concern is that many of them will have difficulty losing weight again and may even gain more weight since rapid weight loss disrupts their metabolism to the extent that excess weight can only be kept off on a regimen of intense, strenuous exercise and an equally abstemious diet for the rest of their lives: a life-style they are unlikely or unable to maintain if they have to work and raise families as well.
The episode might have done more to demonstrate how corporations and governments collude in misleading people to believe myths about dieting, exercising and losing weight that result more in their wallets and purses losing money than in their actually losing weight. These misconceptions can be harmful to people’s long-term health, causing chronic health problems such as obesity and diabetes, and imposing heavy costs on people, their families and society generally in the treatment of these conditions. It’s really not enough for Conover and the show’s makers to try to reassure viewers that making small changes can lead in the long run to better health and happiness if they ignore the power of the media and advertising to manipulate people’s insecurities about their bodies and their weight.