Tom Kerridge betrays his own diet success?

(Rob) #1

TL:DR noted low carber pushes HCLF TV diet show. Sigh :pensive:

For those outside the UK, Tom Kerridge is a Michelin Star ‘Celebrity chef’ who became super obese as he became more successful. He is a big lad still but looks much closer to normal BMI and he lost 11 stone (154lbs, 70kg) on some BS called the dopamine diet. Luckily for Tom, this seems to be lazy Keto with some extra fruit wrapped up in some bollocks about foods that make you happy by boosting dopamine.
He now has a new show on the BBC called Tom Kerridge’s Lose Weight for Good where he works with a group of overweight and obese people helping them with recipes and techniques to eat healthier. The show starts with him stating his own story, huge weight loss, low carb approach etc. so you expect him to leverage this into the show. Yay!
Oh no… he then says that his diet is restrictive and many couldn’t do it so he is following the mainstream advice of the NHS (National Health Service) which is to calorie control and reduce fat. He then proceeds to do a bunch of recipes with his fat victims which are generally high carb and low fat, always noting where he has reduced the fat but ignoring the tons of carbs that he knows not to eat.
He has experts mention to not eat too much sugar and does call T2 a disease of inability to manage insulin rather than BG but that’s about all you get for good science.
I can’t be the only one that is disappointed that he has had such success low carbing yet is profiting (there must be a book coming) from a betrayal of those principles.
Straight after, there is a show called ‘Trust me, I’m a Doctor’ where Dr Michael Mosley, a principal proponent of Keto in the UK, (he calls it the Blood Sugar Diet for marketing and profiteering purposes) do little to expose us to the science that he obviously believes. They did a thing on the effects of various fats on LDL:HDL where at least they showed that Coconut oil didn’t increase LDL and improved HDL more than olive oil so maybe he’s sneaking in little nuggets of truth.
I know, I know, you can’t push this stuff on mainstream media (especially a state broadcaster like the BBC) when the other institutions so vested in the old wisdom are so likely to lambast them for peddling dangerous pseudo science. It still smarts.

PS There was a show after these two about air pollution which was a great thing about getting locals to act to reduce air polluters, pushing leading edge science… so it is possible to push against conservative forces.

Horizon sugar vs fat - anyone in UK watch?
(SleepyMotherOf3 🇬🇧) #2

You are not alone in thinking this, such a lost opportunity… but what I’ve come to expect from the BBC.

(Ellen) #3

Glad to know I’m not the only one annoyed by this! A mate has bought me his dopamine diet book as it’s apparently based on his low carb diet (haven’t read it yet, will pick it up this weekend) so when I saw this on tv thought I’d watch it, switched off after 15 - 20 mins. He already has a book out with same name & HCLF recipes :pensive: really had been hoping the show woud be a shout out for low carb.

(Duncan Kerridge) #4

Yeah I watched about 10 minutes of it before I turned over - I thought it would be low carb but quickly saw it wasn’t. However my mother also watched it and the next day made his Lasagne recipe which was only about 20g carbs per portion, so lowish if not keto and certainly an improvement on her normal diet.

(Rob) #5

Duncan Kerridge… hmm… Are you related to Tom? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Or are you Tom himself :thinking:

(bulkbiker) #6

Agreed with what you say about Kerridge but disagree about Moseley… I don’t think the Blood sugar diet is especially low carb and the foreword was written by Prof Roy Taylor who does the ultra low calorie Newcastle Diet research. I did get the piece by Moseley on coconut oil but he’s conflicted at best and leaping on whichever bandwagon will have him at worst.

(Duncan Kerridge) #7

One Kerridge gets famous and suddenly everyone thinks we’re all related. Then again, I am from Norfolk…

(Rob) #8

Good point about the Taylor stuff. I have said to Brit friends (I am a Brit usually based in the US) that they can look at the Mosely book for some of the science and proof that T2 can be reversed but that the actual diet (800 calories per day for 8 weeks) is unnecessarily brutal and potentially counter productive. I didn’t add up that this was coming from the Newcastle stuff but this makes obvious sense. I did this to make it seem more mainstream for UK people who would have scoffed at a reading list of Taubes, Teicholz, Noakes, Phinney and Fung. Maybe I shouldn’t ‘sugar coat’ it.

If not Mosely, who is the closest to mainstream Keto UK proponent?

(KetoCowboy) #9

Maybe Aseem Molhotra

(Duncan Kerridge) #10

You’ve got Aseem Malhotra and Rangan Chatterjee but both of them seem a bit timid in really coming out hard for low carb / keto. Ivor Cummins of course - I think he has a book out this year, I hope he doesn’t pull his punches when pushed into the public space

(Rob) #11

I do sometimes send people Ivor’s Ketofest 2017 presentation via YouTube but it’s pretty nerdy for many even though it’s probably the least nerdy thing he’s done!

Aseem Malhotra is great but again not very mainstream compared to Mosely. Not that there are mainstreamers in the US outside of celebrities.

(bulkbiker) #12

I tend to point people with Type 2 to the diabetes.co.uk forum where I spend a lot of time. Many low carb/ keto folks there and very supportive (with a few good rows thrown in). I think at the moment the UK is more LCHF than full on keto but we’re getting there…

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #13

Just a note to add about dopamine: since fructose affects the brain’s dopamine levels the same way ethanol does, it is part of the explanation why foods containing it can be addictive to those who are vulnerable (the percentage of people who become addicted to sugar appears to be proportional to the percentage who get addicted to alcohol). So talking about foods that can produce a dopamine effect on the nucleus accumbens is not totally bollocks.

(Rob) #14

Great point. Though I think the point of the diet was to eat things that boosted dopamine… the ‘Happy Diet’ it is also called I think. I’m pretty sure processed carbs are pretty dopamine boosting too… at least I thought they were :face_vomiting:

(Eamon) #15

Just wanted to add that I too was deeply disappointed with Kerridge’s message on this show. I almost wrote a post myself which would have been similar to yours Capnbob. Totally sold out to the mainstream dogma. I’m sure he will sell lots of books. :frowning_face:

(Clare) #16

I too tuned in thinking I’d get some nice new keto recipes - only to find myself shouting at the telly within about 45 seconds.

I switched off and caught up with Endeavour instead. Amusingly, somebody was killed by orange squash - but it wasn’t the sugar in it.

I get the feeling that Kerridge wanted to do a different show - why else would he mention his own story so prominently at the start but the BBC has massive establishment group think - it’s going to take a long while before we see a mainstream, low carb approach on our boxes.

(Rob) #17

:rofl::rofl::rofl:

(Rosemary Easter) #18

I pretty much agree with what you say about Michael Moseley. I too watched the episode with the coconut oil, butter and something else? I noticed that people were drinking the coconut oil neat but putting the butter on spuds and toast and yet nobody mentioned this fact and if as you say MM is into LCHF he should have been aware as this could have slewed the results against butter.

(Sybella) #19

Both Mosley and Kerridge are in the game for themselves in my option! :rage:

(karen) #20

I think we’re seeing more and more people who are addicted to the fame and/or the money that exposure bring. In other words, who care’s what you’re saying as long as it makes a stir that keeps you relevant. - and I have to admit, I probably don’t help that very much. I’m always sort of non-plussed and irritated when I go back to seek new cutting edge info from a favorite scientist and find nothing I haven’t heard a dozen times from them already.