Television: Series slow to chew the fat on global obsession

By Frances Grant

Emotional perceptions as well as health and nutrition issues surround that most troubling of body tissues, subject of a documentary series Fat (TV One, 7.30 pm).

Last night's first instalment in the six-part series went straight to the heart of the matter, focusing on the plight of people who are extremely overweight or, in medical terms, "morbidly obese."

While the physical suffering of the very fat was covered, it was the anguish resulting from the reactions of others - the "snickering at the buffet line-up" - and the self-loathing which were the most powerful.

The programme began by assuring us that the notion of an ideal body weight is a "modern medical fiction." But hard facts were kept to a minimum in this first look at those fighting potentially lethal amounts of flab.

We learned that the number of people suffering morbid obesity in the world is doubling every seven years. Instead of exploring causes, last night's episode looked chiefly at the work of an American doctor who has pioneered a radical surgical treatment for the condition.

"Obese people are the modern moral equivalent of lepers. I am a leper doctor," explained the man dubbed "Doctor God" by grateful patients

The Memphis-based surgeon's ethos was not to blame people for their obesity. Instead he objectively determined who could not survive without his operation, which divides stomach and intestine in half.

The programme featured the obligatory jubilant before-and-after success stories but the survival statistics were not stated. The treatment was not portrayed as a miracle cure as much as a painful and risky last resort.

And the operation had a critic. "It's a sad statement to deform the body and healthy organ of the stomach," noted one Professor Brownell, preferring to speak of the problem of obesity as the result of a "bad food environment."

The professor wasn't given the chance to elaborate, nor did we learn what he was a professor of - the documentary was annoyingly vague about its experts' credentials - but presumably we'll hear more from him later in the series.

The programme also followed one patient through the 24-year-old woman's preparatory tests for the operation to its successful aftermath.

The 230kg mother's desperation not to be an object of shame for her daughter made for one of the programme's most tragic moments.

Her story was a successful device to personalise fat as an issue, but if the series is to make good on its promise to "examine the world's obsession" with the lard stuff, it had better get moving.

Pictured: For a growing number of people, their body size has passed from a niggling concern to a serious health threat.