Diet Junkies
BBC2, Tuesday, 17 February at 8.00pm

First programme (of 3):

Gurus: Fifty years of the diet industry and we are fatter than ever. This is the story of our obsession with slimming, and the people who've made a fortune out of it, beginning with the diet gurus.

Workout guru Jane Fonda, the Beverly Hills Diet's Judy Mazel and Veronica Atkins - wife of the late Dr Atkins and guardian of his low-carb legacy - discuss their methods of shedding pounds.



Diet Junkies tells the story of 50 years of dieting.

The series hears from the doctors who first faced up to the obesity epidemic, the pharmaceutical companies searching for the miracle diet pills, the "diet gurus" and the men and women who've looked to all of them for help in the battle with their weight.

The programmes trace the cultural history of the movement from the Fifties housewives who took amphetamines, through the rise of Dr Atkins and the fat-free food craze of the Eighties, to the future of dieting at the start of a new century.

This is the first time British television has taken such an in-depth look at the subject, and it is the definitive history of a phenomenon that has touched us all.