Superfoods: the Real Story, Channel 4 - TV review: Behind the hype of the latest health fads and buzzwords
Kate Quilton eats kale for breakfast every morning and glows with radiant health, but neither she nor this programme could explain exactly why it's so good for us
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Your support makes all the difference.Eggs are now good for your cholesterol, fruit makes you fat and diet sodas will give you cancer. Got it? That's why any attempt to stay up to date with the latest, usually contradictory news on healthy eating is frustrating enough to send most of us screaming into the nearest cake shop.
So are 'superfoods' for suckers? Or is there some hard evidence behind the claims made for goji berries, wheatgrass and the rest? That's what Food Unwrapped presenter Kate Quilton is attempting to uncover in new four-part series Superfoods: the Real Story.
First things first, the 'Grapefruit Diet' which has been recycled annually in women's magazines since the year dot doesn't work, despite the testaments of all those tanned and toned Californians that Quilton found on YouTube. These yellow citrus fruits do contain a substance called 'naringenin', which has been shown to shrink fat cells, but you'd have to eat 40 grapefruits in one sitting for it to have any noticeable effect.
This is according to a Jerusalem-based scientist, and Israel is the biggest exporter of grapefruits to the UK, so he should know. If the professor can successfully create a naringenin supplement, he'll be as rich as Croesus, but until then it's back to balanced eating and regular exercise for the rest of us.
Quilton eats kale for breakfast every morning and glows with radiant health, but while she's a fine advert for the green vegetable, neither she nor this programme could explain exactly why it's so good for us. Something about eyesight? Keep eating it, anyway.
More astounding were the claims made for natural sugar substitute xylitol. Not only is it just as sweet as the sweet stuff, but, according to some research, it actively protects against tooth decay. In Finland, the government hands it out free to children at nursery school. I'd be investing in shares right now, if I didn't know better. Next week they'll be saying it causes liver failure.
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