That's a lot of raw fruit and vegetables

I've been watching a very interesting BBC documentary called "The truth about food".



I'm not sure how much truth there is in this show, given that it's one of those modern documentaries that has been jazzed up with all sorts of devices to make it interesting enough to put on TV. Instead of a Professor Julius Sumner Miller lecture on a topic, the modern show requires a celebrity spending time in a helicopter flying over Austria to explain how long it takes poo to move through your guts.

That aside, it's worth watching if you're getting on a bit and wondering about constipation and bowel cancer. One of the things they do in episode one is lock up a bunch of subjects in a zoo for 12 days and feed them nothing but raw fruit and vegetables. They have to eat 5 kilos of raw fruit and veg a day to get enough calories. Plus one olive soaked in brine for their salt intake.

5 kilos is an awful lot of cauliflower and strawberries to be getting through. They can't cook any of it, so things like potatoes and pumpkin are off the menu. I was amazed at the sheer mass of food you need to consume if all you have is the raw stuff. And all they seem to do is lie around all day on lounge chairs gossiping and carrying on.

Personally, I'll stick to steak.