Welcome to our restaurant with a difference.
We're inviting 20 hungry diners to lunch right here.
The tables are set,
the kitchen is ready and the menus are printed.
So far, so ordinary. Yes?
No. Because there's nothing ordinary about this restaurant.
Just metres away, we've installed a secret fully functioning gym.
We have 25 fitness fanatics already warming up
and they are going to burn off
every single calorie that is eaten in our restaurant today.
Nothing like this has ever been done before.
We are going to all this trouble
because the latest scientific research indicates
that if we are shown how much exercise it takes
to burn off the calories we consume... What? ..we'll eat less.
I'm Fred Sirieix,
and I've been in the restaurant trade for more than 30 years.
I think that many of us are blissfully unaware
of how many calories are packed into our favourite tasty food.
I'm Dr Zoe Williams, GP and workout warrior.
In my clinic, I often see the results
of people eating too much and exercising too little.
This imbalance means nearly two thirds of us
are overweight or obese,
a situation that brings with it a whole host of health problems.
In our restaurant,
we'll find out if fish and chips are less appealing
when our diners realise they have to pound a treadmill for 86 minutes
to chase the calories away.
ALL GROAN
We'll also examine how our genes influence our weight...
The percentage of body weight that's actually down to our genes
ranges between 40% to 70%.
..And learn how small changes to our diet
can boost calorie burn.
We're finding fat-busting microbes.
They have the ability to produce special enzymes that break down fat.
This is the Restaurant That Burns Off Calories.
What people are here for is to have a good time
and a smile is not a smile unless you show your teeth.
Go and check your tables.
Let's go, let's do this.
Our restaurant opens ready to welcome its first diners.
Front of house,
everything will seem normal to them.
But every time they order food or drink,
we'll be counting the calories.
All right, guys, chop, chop.
The diners start to arrive...
Nice to see you guys.
..and our experiment begins.
Come with me.
First through the door is a group of friends celebrating a birthday.
There you are, a menu for you. Thanks very much.
Happy birthday, by the way. Thank you. Pleasure.
Birthday boy Ben tries to watch what he eats,
whereas Rowan and Matty aren't so careful.
How are you, ladies? Hi! Welcome.
Next is a family from Nottingham.
Here you are.
We've got some lovely food on the menu, guys.
Donna and Maxilie say they are health-conscious,
whereas Natalia reckons she can get away with eating what she likes.
I'm going to get the beef burger and make a mess.
I'm having the salmon.
I'm tempting them with a typical bistro menu
packed with the dishes that you Brits love,
like burgers, chicken Caesar salad, and of course,
a good old fish and chips.
My colleague will come and take your order in just a second.
Cheers, thank you.
Our diners all think they're here
to make a show about hidden calories when eating out.
I'm in between the calamari and the salmon.
What they don't know is...
..for every calorie ordered in there,
the pressure on the guys in here increases.
At the moment, my gym squad are just warming up, but trust me,
this lot are super-fit
and ready to burn off all the calories
that'll be consumed next door.
I'm having the fish and chips. Calamari looks nice.
How's it going? Very good.
I love the start of service, the anticipation
but I must admit, this is very different from what I normally do
because my guys have to make notes of every single calorie.
It's a really neat way of showing just how much effort is required
to burn off the calories that we might consume in a meal.
THEY LAUGH
When are we going to tell them about our secret? Later.
We don't want them to know yet,
because it might affect how much they order.
A revelatory study published at the end of 2019
by researchers from Loughborough University
found that when menus showed how much exercise would be required
to burn off the calories contained within the dishes,
people chose to eat less.
It's predicted that if the system were widely adopted,
it could shave nearly 200 calories
off the average person's daily consumption.
I suspect that when they go through there
and they see just how much physical activity it requires
to burn off the calories that they've consumed,
had they known that, they might have ordered differently.
Well, look, my team here is very well drilled
and the people here are going to order plenty of food,
loads of calories, so make sure the guys there are working out.
Listen, I've got a table here, see you soon.
Hi, guys.
Calories are a simple unit
used to measure the energy contained in the food we eat.
Are you ready to order? Yes.
Time to see how many our first table will rack up
with their starter, main and drinks.
I'll go for the chicken. The chicken for you.
What about you? Salmon and fish and chips, please, Fred.
I shall get your order ready.
Thank you.
We tot up the calories and fire them through to the gym.
Right, guys, are you all feeling ready to work out?
ALL: Yes!
OK, so the first table have ordered
and we're about to find out exactly how many calories.
It's going to appear on this big screen here.
8,287.
All right, you'd better get going.
Ready...
Steady...
Go!
This is going to be a real challenge
because we're aiming to burn off every calorie eaten this lunchtime
before our 20 diners leave the restaurant.
To give us any chance of doing this,
we've got 25 fitness fanatics
working out across six rowing machines, nine treadmills
and ten exercise bikes.
They include a university rowing crew and personal trainers.
Plus, we have another 30 gym bunnies waiting in the wings,
ready for when our first squad get tired.
So this is how it's going to work.
We've got two screens.
The one on the left in blue,
that's showing us the orders that have gone in.
So every time somebody orders
a starter, main course, dessert or a drink,
the number of calories ordered will be added to that total.
The screen on the right is showing us the number of calories
being burned right here in our gym
and you can see that that number is constantly going up
and chasing the number in blue.
But there is some potential good news.
If anyone in the restaurant doesn't eat some of their food,
we'll work out the total calories from the leftovers
and deduct these from the total.
And finally, I've got this little screen here, which is handy
so I can just keep an eye on what's going on in the restaurant.
Our tables continue placing their orders.
I'll have the parfait, please.
The 377-calorie duck liver parfait starter
is proving to be a popular choice, but would it be if our diners knew
it would take them 55 minutes on the rowing machine
to burn those calories off?
And would they think twice
about the 495-calorie calamari with lemon aioli
if they had to pound the treadmill for 43 minutes?
Talking of which...
Guys, the second table have ordered.
Let's see how many calories.
ALL GROAN
So they ordered 6,619 calories,
so this is the new target.
We're using a set of standard exercise ratings
to calculate the calorie burn in our gym,
and everyone is working out at a set moderate pace
that they'll be able to keep up for the duration of service.
Helping us run today's experiment
is sports scientist Dr Javier Gonzalez.
Hey, Javier.
Hiya. How are they getting on?
Yeah, good. They're doing really well.
What I want to know is,
of these three different types of equipment,
which one will help you burn the most calories?
It all depends on the number of muscles you're recruiting
to do the exercise and the size of those muscles.
So a lot of people find rowing
quite difficult to sustain for a long time,
so we've set this at a moderate pace that should be sustainable
and at that pace,
these guys are burning around 415 calories per hour.
What you can probably see
is that most of the energy expenditure
is coming from the legs here.
And then at the top of the stroke,
you can see that the biceps are working as well,
and also the back.
To burn off our 989-calorie fish and chip main
will take one of our rowers 143 minutes.
How about the exercise bikes?
So you can see here, there's a lot less work being done by the arms
and actually more work being done by the legs. Yeah.
So at the pace we've set these guys on,
they're burning about 478 calories per hour,
so a bit more than the rowing.
And to burn off that portion of fish and chips in our restaurant,
it's going to take these guys about 124 minutes.
Did you hear that?
You have to do this for 124 minutes. Oh, wow. Two hours of work.
Finally, there are the treadmills,
where our runners are each burning 689 calories an hour.
To burn off our portion of fish and chips,
it's only 86 minutes.
You say "only". It's still quite a lot of running, isn't it? Yeah.
You obviously do you quite regularly, do you?
Yeah, but not on a treadmill.
It's your go-to exercise if you want to burn the most calories
in the least amount of time.
That is because this form of exercise
is a weight-bearing form of exercise,
so there's no time for rest here.
These muscle groups are working not only to propel them,
but also to support their upper body right the way through to their neck.
And because of all that extra work
of the muscles producing the movement,
their hearts have to work harder, the lungs have to work harder.
And all of that contributes to the higher energy expenditure.
Across all 25 machines,
our gym-goers are burning almost 13,500 calories of energy an hour.
Which is a good job, because there's a potential
for our diners to go seriously overboard today.
Thanks, chef.
Service!
If they choose the most calorific item from each course,
they'll consume 2,612 calories.
Cheers, everyone. Guys!
Cheers! Happy birthday, Ben!
That's well in excess
of the Government's recommended daily calorie intake.
It's very pretty, look.
Generally, for the average healthy weight woman, it's 2,000 calories
and the average healthy weight man, 2,500.
But like many of us, I'm a bit unclear
why we need all those calories in the first place.
How are you doing?
Let's talk about calorie intake.
What do we need calories for?
Calories provide the energy for our body,
and our bodies need energy to do everything,
even just to think, even to sleep.
We need energy all the time.
Put the same amount of energy or calories in as we burn off,
and we maintain our weight.
Put more in than we use, and we gain weight.
The average adult eats around 300 excess calories a day.
Over a month, this could lead to a weight gain of
as much as three pounds.
When we think about our total energy consumption,
we can break it down into three different sections
and I can explain those to you using these lentils here.
So this glass represents your total daily energy expenditure.
And the first section of the three is the red lentils,
which represents your resting metabolic rate.
For the average healthy weight person,
resting metabolic rate eats up
around 60% of the calories consumed.
It's the energy our bodies need just to stay alive
and doesn't include any physical activity.
It powers our organs and muscles
as well as providing energy for basic neurological functions.
Which organ of the body do you think uses the most energy?
Well, by far, I'm sure the heart.
You'd think so, wouldn't you?
It's actually the brain.
A huge 20% of our resting metabolic rate
is spent powering our grey matter.
For the average healthy weight man, like Fred,
this equates to around 324 calories a day.
The liver, which is responsible for filtering the blood,
uses about 290 calories.
And surprisingly, the heart only uses 100
to pump blood around the body.
And then there's muscle. So muscle is burning calories as well,
even when you're not using it, just at rest.
For a healthy weight man, it's about 345 calories a day
and for a healthy weight woman, about 280 calories a day.
And presumably, it's because men, on average,
are bigger than women, right? Yeah, that's true.
But also, men tend to carry a higher percentage of muscle
compared to women.
In fact, a typical man has around a third more muscle
than a typical woman, which helps account
for why their recommended daily calorie intake is higher.
Now, the next one I'm going to tell you about
is dietary-induced thermogenesis.
That makes up about 10% of the energy expenditure.
About 10% of the calories we consume are burned digesting, metabolising
and absorbing the food we eat.
For a man like Fred, dietary-induced thermogenesis
accounts for around 250 calories a day.
So, just like our diners are doing right now.
I mean, they are burning calories just through eating itself?
So everything from chewing the food,
it being absorbed in the small intestine
to then utilising it to repair the body,
build new cells, build new muscle, etc,
all of that requires energy.
As dietary-induced thermogenesis takes place,
heat is generated, which raises our body temperature
by up to one degree Celsius.
It's the reason we feel warmer when we eat.
So that's two of the reasons why we need calories.
What is the third one?
So, the third one is
our daily physical activity energy expenditure.
Physical energy expenditure
burns around 30% of the daily calorie intake
for the average person.
But it's not just about a full-on workout by the guys in our gym.
This encompasses any physical activity, so just daily movement,
everything from getting out of bed,
getting dressed, brushing your teeth,
lifting the burger to your mouth and even fidgeting.
People who fidget will burn more calories.
Depending on things like age and height,
our recommended daily calorie allowance varies.
As long as we stick to it,
these three processes burn the calories off.
But exceed that daily allowance,
and our bodies store the extra energy as fat.
The more fat we have, the more likely we are to suffer
from serious illnesses like type two diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
There's not a great deal we can do
to increase our resting metabolic rate.
There's not a great deal we can do
to increase our dietary-induced thermogenesis.
But this comes on to why we're doing this experiment.
We really can increase our daily physical activity.
I'm going to do that right now.
300 press-ups, off you go.
OK. Oh, he's off!
Nice tekkerz. Thank you very much.
Four, five. Probably earned yourself one gram of butter there.
Thank you very much!
This energy consumed/energy expended equation
is at the heart of our experiment.
I've only got to look at anything fattening and I put on three pounds.
Not fair!
But this simple maths seems at odds
with people who say they struggle with their weight
regardless of what they eat.
To find out if our genes can affect how heavy we are,
I've come to the University of Cambridge
to meet world renowned geneticist Dr Giles Yeo
at the Institute of Metabolic Science.
He's spent the last 22 years
exploring the link between genetics and body weight.
Hi, Giles. Hey, Zoe.
Hello! How are you?
I am very well.
OK, the big question is,
do our genes play a role when it comes to our weight?
Undoubtedly, yes.
The percentage of body weight that's actually down to our genes
ranges between 40% to 70%.
That much? Yes.
Of the estimated 25,000 genes in the human genome,
to date, around 350 have been identified
as influencing our weight.
Subtle changes within these genes called variants
can impact how overweight we might be.
It's your individual mix of these 350 genes
that then influences whether or not you look like you,
you look like me, you look like Santa Claus.
Some of them predispose you,
make you more susceptible to being slightly heavier,
sometimes only by a few grams, sometimes by a kilo or so.
We all have these genes,
but the more overweight variants that occur within them,
the more likely it is that we'll be overweight.
Now, these genes do not determine your body weight,
but they play a role in influencing our feeding behaviour.
At the end of the day, the only way to gain weight
is still to put the piece of food in your mouth.
What I'm saying is that your genetics
makes it more or less likely
for you putting that piece of food in your mouth.
It influences how we actually eat, how we behave around food.
I mean, obviously, we're in the midst of an obesity crisis.
Is that because our genetics have changed?
No, our genetics has not changed.
Broadly speaking, as a population, this change in our body weight
has happened against a constant genetic background.
So it is the change in environment that has caused this.
Humans evolved when calories were scarce.
But today, these caveman genetics are challenged
with food that is cheaper and easier to access than ever before.
Is it easy for me to determine whether or not I have a fat gene?
I know is going to be the answer,
because someone managed to smuggle out some DNA and send it to me.
So when that person got me to spit into a tube...
You thought you were just doing something else.
So we do know, actually.
Broadly speaking, you have 12% more
of the variations that predispose you to being slightly heavier
than the average woman. Oh.
The gene with the variant
found to have the largest contributing factor to weight gain
is called fat mass and obesity associated, or FTO gene.
It makes people more likely to overeat
and choose high-calorie foods.
Do I have the FTO gene?
You do. You're heterozygous,
meaning that you have one copy of the FTO gene.
You are supposedly on average a kilo and a half heavier
than someone else who doesn't have it
and 25% more likely to become obese over a lifetime.
40-45% of the human species have it.
Wow.
Now, if you have two copies of it,
which about a billion people in the world do,
then you are on average three kilograms heavier
and 50% more likely to become obese over your lifetime.
The really interesting thing about the FTO, gene, though,
is that it is sensitive to exercise. I do a lot of exercise.
Exactly. If you have the FTO variation, you halve your risk
if you are physically active. So that's me.
You've just described me.
Because I'm physically active,
I still have that risk, but I've halved it. Exactly.
It's not yet known how exercise
reduces our sensitivity to the FTO variant.
But geneticists aren't only studying genes
that predispose us to being overweight.
Professor Sadaf Farooqi and her team across the corridor from Giles
have recently made a ground-breaking discovery
that may explain why 2% of the population are underweight,
which is a BMI of 18 or less.
So here we're looking at a particular gene
and this gene is called MC4R.
Now, when we look at a gene,
it's actually like looking at a very, very long word.
And what we do here is, we look at each letter one at a time
and we look to see if there's any difference in a person
who may be underweight.
Sadaf locates the genes containing underweight variants
by comparing them with people
who are a healthy weight and overweight.
Our genetic code consists of four bases of DNA
represented by the letters A, C, G and T,
grouped into threes called codons.
If just one letter within a specific codon differs,
the skinny variant is triggered.
When we look at this particular region over here,
this particular letter shown in yellow is a G
and in the person who's thin, that changes to an A.
So something very subtle like that,
one single letter in a word that's a thousand letters long,
is enough to keep this person thin.
So a person who might have two copies
of this particular change in the gene that keeps them thin
might be two or three kilograms lighter
than another person in whom the gene is normal.
It's really quite remarkable.
How these so-called skinny genes work isn't yet fully understood,
but for geneticists like Sadaf,
their identification is opening up new avenues of research.
We want to understand what those genes actually do in the body
so we could then harness that
to develop new medical treatments, new drugs, for example,
that could be then used to help people
who really struggle with their weight
and for whom nothing else works.
What about the bigger picture?
I mean, can understanding these genes better
influence society in a bigger way?
I think there's two main things. It helps us understand biology
and how this differs between different people,
and hopefully it will give us a better chance
of trying to fix the problem with obesity.
But the second thing is to let people know,
including our policymakers, that body weight is not a choice, OK?
If people think that body weight is simply a lifestyle choice,
bad habits or otherwise,
then I don't think the right resources
are ever going to be made to solve the problem of the obesity epidemic.
We don't know the genetics of our diners today,
but we are closely monitoring how they behave around food
and exactly how many calories they are consuming.
Now, look at this.
This is the burger.
This is the go-to food for so many people.
Beautiful chips, a generous amount of sauce.
But this is 1,123 calories.
Five diners, including Natalia and Keith,
have ordered this pub classic...
I like the beef in this.
..blissfully unaware that, back of house,
they're committing one of our runners
to 98 minutes on a treadmill.
They don't know about our gym, but are they any more aware
of the number of calories they are consuming?
How many calories do you think there is in your burger?
Over a thousand.
1,123. 1,123?
Yes. Is that bad for me? Are you enjoying it?
I'm enjoying it, yeah.
We'll see what the damage is later.
See you later!
What about our healthy eaters?
You both had chicken.
Shall we guess? No idea how many calories are in anything.
800, 900?
Well, this is one of the least calorific dishes on the menu.
Really? It's 760 calories. OK.
It turns out that our diners aren't too bad at estimating calories.
But research shows that most of us find it difficult.
It's just easier to eat everything.
It's just easier to eat everything and be fat.
Cheers to that.
A recent study suggests
that we underestimate the number of calories we consume
by around a third.
But there are some very simple rules that can help to identify
which foods are more calorific.
I'm joining dietician Monica Siemicka in the kitchen.
Thanks for joining us on this busy service. Always a pleasure.
Thank you very much.
To help explain, we're looking
at our 760 calorie oven-roasted chicken breast main course.
It would take 95 minutes on the exercise bike
to burn off the calories on this plate.
So let's take a look at this food here.
Thank you.
You can see you've got your mashed potato here.
That's mainly your carbohydrates.
We also have chicken, which is providing protein,
and then the creamy sauce. That's got a lot of fat in it.
So those are known as our macronutrients, the protein,
the carbohydrate and the fat.
These three macronutrients,
which make up most of the food we eat,
contain varying numbers of calories.
Pure carbohydrate contains four calories per gram.
Protein also contains four calories,
but pure fat has a huge nine calories per gram.
That means ten grams of fat
has as many calories as 22.5g of pure carbohydrate,
such as sugar.
Monica, you know I'm French. Yeah.
I love butter and I love bread.
There's something I want to show you.
So if you take this piece of bread... Right.
And we put on about this much butter.
Mmm, you know me well!
If you look at that, the calories from the butter
and the calories from the bread are pretty much the same.
So you can see that you get a lot more for your money
if you're eating the bread. Mmm.
But tasty, right?
But I'll tell you one thing.
The diners in there, I don't think they are thinking about this at all.
I don't think so either. They're just enjoying themselves.
So much so that they've ordered an incroyable 32,219 calories.
Right now, we need to be on treadmills. It's cool, though, man.
At least we're halfway now, so it's not too bad.
My gym team has already been going for one hour and 43 minutes,
and they can't drop the pace
because they have to burn off all the calories eaten in the restaurant
before Fred's diners leave.
OK, guys, you are doing amazing.
I'm so proud of you.
Honestly, you're killing it.
The diner who has ordered
two of our least fatty and least calorific dishes is Jilly.
Her starter and main combined come in at just 889 calories.
I want to know if that's typical behaviour for her.
Are you enjoying your food? Yes. Fantastic.
I wanted to ask you a question.
Are you the kind of ladies that never put any weight on?
Oh, I'm lucky. Really?
Have you always been like this? Mmm. Yeah, really lucky.
I don't watch what I eat. I'll eat what I feel like.
I would just eat healthily.
Whether doing it consciously or not,
Jilly clearly has healthy eating habits.
Hi. I was speaking to this lady over there
and she said she can eat whatever she wants
and she doesn't put any weight on.
What did she order, though?
A salad. A salad she wants!
I tend to find that those people
who feel they can eat whatever they want, as much as they want
tend to also be the same people that choose healthier foods
and perhaps aren't consuming as many calories as they think they are.
Jilly's food choices are also sensible
for someone in her age group.
As we get older,
the average person gains between one to two pounds per year.
When we're young, especially when we're still growing,
we need additional calories to grow, to grow new cells.
As we get older, we start to lose muscle mass.
So in our thirties, we start to lose muscle mass.
But by the age of 50, we're losing about 1% every year
unless we do something to maintain it.
So actually, in our late sixties,
we require about 400 calories less than we did in our late twenties.
So how can I keep on my muscle mass, then? Exercise more?
What do I need to do?
You've got to use your muscles,
so muscle strengthening, resistance training
or simple things like squats and press-ups.
If you want to, you know, get in that gym.
Sorry, I've got something to do. See you soon!
Clearly, weight gain isn't only a problem for us as we age.
As a population, we are getting heavier
and some scientists believe this is down to our environment.
I've come to Oxford
to meet nutrition scientist Professor Susan Jebb,
who sits on government committees on diet and health.
She believes that the combination of genes which encourage us to eat
and an environment where food is ever present is a dangerous one.
Hi, Susan! Hi, Zoe. You know what, just walking here to meet you,
we are absolutely bombarded by food everywhere you turn.
You're absolutely right.
Almost every moment of our day,
there is something encouraging us to eat
and food's available everywhere we go relatively cheaply.
It's sometimes called an obesogenic environment,
meaning it's almost inevitable
that people are beginning to become obese.
There are now a third more fast food outlets on the British high street
than there were just ten years ago.
I mean, it does seem
that you're constantly faced with temptation.
Even the checkouts at clothing stores have sweets now.
It's about the sheer availability of food.
We're being offered food at times which are completely abnormal.
And what that's encouraging people to do
is to snack outside of mealtimes.
Susan believes radical steps are needed
to tackle our overconsumption.
What more can be done, then?
I think we really need the Government to step in
and help to change the kind of world we live in.
There's all sorts of things we could do,
but perhaps one of the obvious ones
is about restricting food advertising.
Now, every time we see an advert for food,
it primes us to want to eat something.
All food, though? What about advertising healthy food?
It'd be lovely to think we could just promote healthy food.
But seeing any kind of food makes us think about food
and prompts us to eat.
At the end of the day,
obesity is caused by people eating too much.
Now, people will say that's nanny state.
It's absolutely not.
Removing advertising gives people genuine freedom of choice.
You actually allow people to choose what to eat, when to eat it,
entirely as a product of their own decision-making
and when they're hungry.
Susan would like to see new policies introduced
to control overeating, and draws parallels
with the policies introduced to reduce smoking 50 years ago.
If you think back to the 1970s, we had lots of tobacco advertising.
When we look back at that now, it's pretty shocking.
"They're low tar with taste".
Look at this one.
That's for the sporty woman, "bold and adventurous". Gosh.
I think we should just imagine in 20 or 30 years' time
how we will feel about the kind of food advertising
that we see around today.
The ban on tobacco advertising has helped reduce smoking rates
from a high of 46% in the 1970s to a low of 15% now.
Susan thinks that similar restrictions on food advertising
could go some way to reducing the likelihood
of people overeating.
But this idea faces considerable opposition.
The food industry is so powerful.
Can the Government overcome it?
They certainly can if they want to.
I hope that they will start to recognise that the action to date
has just not been sufficient.
They are going to have to step up
and take some much more dramatic action.
A blanket ban isn't yet on the cards,
but the Government is considering
whether to prohibit junk food advertising
on television before 9pm.
Well, I'm not sure if I'd call our restaurant environment obesogenic,
but the diners are certainly racking up the calories.
So far, a total of 33,086.
That's an average of 1,654 per person.
The equivalent of someone running nonstop for 144 minutes.
And thanks to the drinks menu, there is no let-up.
Guys, I hate to be the bearer of bad news,
but it appears that they're really going for it with the drinks
and they've just ordered two more pints, so...
..another 544 calories.
You've got this, though.
Smiley faces, have we got this?
ALL: Yeah!
Have we got this? Yeah!
Amazingly, 26% of our calorie total is made up of alcoholic drinks.
CORK POPS
Ooh!
To find out why booze is so calorific,
I'm joining dietician Lucy Jones at the bar.
Lucy, look at this restaurant. The diners are enjoying themselves.
But how much calories are there in drinks?
Quite a few, actually.
And it's something that most of us aren't really aware of.
In fact, a recent survey showed that 80% of people who drink alcohol
either don't know the calories in their drink
or they massively underestimate it. Really?
So Jose is making us a gin and tonic here.
I mean, such a popular drink. Yeah.
A double gin and tonic has 165 calories.
Thank you very much. Really?
I mean, surely if you substituted this tonic
with a sugar-free tonic water, the calories would be much less, no?
Well, it's a common misconception, actually.
Lots of people think that the calories in their alcoholic drink
would come from the mixer
or the sugar that's been added into it.
But the lion's share of the calories
is being driven by the alcohol itself.
Having a diet tonic instead of a sugary one
would only take our drink down from 165
to 117 calories.
So the key would actually be reducing the amount of alcohol
that you have to reduce the calories.
So maybe a single shot.
Yes, if you can bring yourself to do it.
And it's the same when it comes to whiskey or vodka.
If it's 40% alcohol, it's 56 calories per single shot.
When you look at the different calories
for each type of macronutrient,
so carbohydrates, for every gram, four calories.
Same with protein, around four calories.
Pure fat, nine calories per gram.
But alcohol is a very close second.
For every gram of pure alcohol there are seven calories.
This is huge! It's a huge amount.
So even though you're only having a small amount of it,
actually, it's a very calorific drink.
And yet people stop eating bread
and then they have a double gin and tonic.
It doesn't make any sense.
But what about my favourite tipple, beer?
We have a stout here, and a lager.
Most people, I think, would assume
that a lager would be lighter than a stout.
Well, it's a very similar story.
If you take 4% beer, which both of these are,
most of the calories are being driven by the alcohol content.
If you take the lager in this pint, there's 182 calories.
If you take the stout, that increases, but only to 199.
Really? But this looks like a meal in itself.
I know, and yet the difference is perhaps 15 calories.
For every percentage point the alcohol in your pint increases,
you can add 32 calories to the total.
I mean, if you were to have that on top of eating,
it obviously adds a significant amount
to your total calorie intake for that meal.
At the end of the day, if you want to consume less calories
and therefore exercise less, you've got to consume less of that.
If only our diners were heeding that advice
because, on the other side of the restaurant wall,
all those excess calories are taking their toll.
So far, these guys are doing amazing.
However, there's no doubt that some of them are really starting to flag
and we're already having to switch some in and switch some out.
I'm just hoping we're not going to be here till ten o'clock at night.
Although very tired,
my workout team are more than happy to exercise today.
But 37% of us never work out,
which is contributing to our expanding waistlines.
My diners are finishing their mains and we are clearing tables.
Girls, table three,
the lady left all this mashed potato here.
Make a note.
And to make sure our gym bunnies aren't wasting energy,
we are also tracking the calories returned to the kitchen.
Hi, everybody.
I've got some good news for you.
They didn't finish all of their main courses,
so whatever's been returned to the kitchen,
we're taking those calories off the target.
So we're going to bring that figure down.
ALL CHEER
So the total food returned back to the kitchen was 1,950 calories.
Our total may have come down by nearly 2,000 calories
but, on average, each of our diners has already consumed
a whopping 1,787 this lunchtime.
Lucy, I'll tell you what.
In my experience, when people drink, they also tend to eat more.
So just because alcohol contains calories,
doesn't mean it makes us eat any less. Really?
In fact, it's making us want to eat more.
Studies show that people who consume the equivalent of two pints of beer
eat on average 22% more calories during a meal.
We know that alcohol lowers inhibitions, especially in love,
but not only in love, actually.
It happens when people are eating food. Yeah.
Actually, there are studies
showing that alcohol does reduce our inhibitions.
But there's got to be something physiological going on as well,
because even studies in mice,
who don't have the same sort of social inhibitions,
when studies have looked at giving them alcohol, they also eat more.
The team that did that research came to the conclusion
that they think there's a change
in the neuronal response in those mice
that is the same neuronal response that happens in starvation.
It's also believed that alcohol suppresses a hormone called leptin.
Leptin's job is to send signals to our brain
that tell us when we're full.
If our brain doesn't receive the signals correctly,
we are more likely to overeat.
And that's not where the problems for our diners end.
We also know that it increases our food reward.
Studies have shown when you drink,
you particularly seem to enjoy and get more food reward
from foods that are high in fat.
From my experience in working in the restaurant business,
when people don't drink, they actually eat less.
That is for sure.
And when people have nice wines,
they have an aperitif, they have a brandy after their meal,
they tend to eat more. Good for business, eh?
Unfortunately for Zoe, my team are taking orders
for the part of the meal with perhaps the most food reward.
Can I tempt you with any desserts?
Every single time, sticky toffee pudding.
Brownie with chocolate and vanilla ice cream. Yeah.
The first table have ordered their desserts.
And you all know what happens with dessert, right?
Let's see the calories on the target.
ALL GROAN
There's another 2,127 calories.
Hitting this calorie target
really is proving hard work for our 25 secret fitness fanatics.
But new research suggests that each of us
may have billions of helpful calorie burners hidden inside us.
I'm in London, visiting a team from King's College University.
They're undertaking ground-breaking research on our gut microbiome.
The team is led
by professor of genetic epidemiology Tim Spector.
Hi, Tim. Hello!
So the word microbiome is very trendy at the moment,
but what exactly is our gut microbiome?
The microbiome is a community of all the microscopic bugs
that are in our body.
And really, we're mainly talking about the 99% of them
which are in our lower intestine.
They consist of standard bacteria,
and then you've got fungi,
you've got yeast,
you've got parasites
and you've also got viruses that feed off them.
So this whole collection all works together
in ways that act very much like a virtual organ in our bodies.
They're all key to how our body is regulated
and how we deal with food when it comes into our bodies.
Tim and his team have spent the last five years
analysing the gut microbiome of more than 4,000 twins of varying weights.
So you've each got a chocolate milkshake
and two muffins each.
You've got ten minutes to eat that in. OK, gosh!
Identical twins have identical genes, but crucially,
their microbiome can be different,
allowing Tim to more easily isolate the microbes
that alter how they metabolise food.
We found that, within the pairs,
the one that was more overweight, compared to the skinny one,
always had less diversity of microbes.
Tim calculates that the microbiome could account
for up to a third of the weight difference between twins.
We know that a healthy gut microbiome
means that generally, you gain less weight.
We think that's because your immune system's working better,
so you're not producing inflammation in the body,
so it's not in a stressed state,
and that seems to affect all the metabolism.
A significant factor seems to be
how quickly fat in the blood dissipates after eating.
Already, the two samples look completely different. Yeah.
Here at the bottom,
this one separated out much more quickly than this one.
After consuming food, fat levels in the blood spike.
The more these spikes can be reduced and the faster it can be done,
the less likely fat is to be stored on the body
and so the less likely we are to be overweight.
Have you come across any star players,
any specific types of bugs that are really helping us out?
Yes, we're finding just recently in our latest study,
fat-busting microbes.
They have an ability to produce special enzymes that break down fat
and they create something,
these bile salts that get released from your gall bladder
when you get a fatty meal.
And if there's plenty of these bile salts,
you're going to break down that fat much faster
than someone who doesn't have those same microbes.
And this can result in someone getting rid of a fatty meal
in half the time it would take someone
who doesn't have those same microbes.
We find that it in very low levels in people that are overweight
and high levels in people who stay relatively skinny.
It's estimated that just a third of us have high levels
of these fat-busting bacteria.
But the good news is that we can all cultivate them.
The number one tip is to eat more diverse plants.
If you can eat 30 or more different types of plant a week,
doesn't matter about the quantity...
Sounds a lot. It does sound a lot.
But it's not as bad as you think
because every nut, every seed, every herb and spice
is in fact derived from a plant.
So you can sprinkle on mixed nuts and seeds and get a lot of it.
These 30 plants are all prebiotics.
They're fertilisers of microbes
and they're going to help grow new species.
And then, of course, you've got probiotics.
These are live microbes in the food itself.
We're talking about high-quality cheese, we're talking about yogurts.
And try things that are like super-yogurts,
so kefir, kombucha, kimchi.
They all have 30 or so different types of microbe in them.
So the good thing, the really great thing about all of this is,
there is actually something that we can all do
to improve our health in this way.
Absolutely. This is telling us that unlike our genes,
which is hard to change - you can't change your parents -
you can actually change your gut microbes.
Which Tim's twins today suggest could leave us a few kilos lighter.
Back in our restaurant with a difference,
Zoe's gym teams have each racked up
two hours and 34 minutes of exercise
and are closing in on the restaurant total.
Most of my diners have yet to order puddings,
but Ben's birthday celebration table
have already polished theirs off.
The five of them have consumed a total of 13,101 calories,
which averages out at 2,620 calories each.
In gym terms, that's five hours and 28 minutes of cycling.
Here we are. Thank you very much.
Still oblivious to our experiment...
Could I have the cheesecake, please?
Cheesecake. Chocolate brownie for me, please.
..the remaining diners are placing their dessert orders.
Right, guys, just when you think you're catching up,
we've got the tally in for the desserts,
so we're going to add those to the calorie target.
Oh, my God!
You know about dessert, right?
You know about dessert, all those calories.
That's an extra 7,816 calories.
So let's keep going.
Final push.
I know you've got it in you.
Are you still with me?
ALL: Yes!
I want to see if I can help Zoe out and reduce that number,
so I've created a special dessert menu.
It has all the same options,
but this time with a little icon and the minutes of exercise needed
to burn off each dish.
Just got some dessert menus for you. Thanks very much.
Previous studies that have tried this
reported a 19% decrease in calories
once diners were faced with the amount of exercise
it would take to burn them off.
Will our diners... What?
..change their orders when faced with the same information?
I've got another menu now
with a little bit more information on it.
The worst offenders are the chocolate brownie
and the cheeseboard.
Both contain 788 calories and require 69 minutes of running,
99 minutes of cycling,
or 114 minutes of rowing to burn them off.
So now that you know what you know,
would you like to change your order?
I would, yes. So what are you going to have instead?
The ice cream, because that's actually significantly less.
What are you going to do?
I'm going to change to the sticky toffee pudding.
Denise has changed her order from the cheesecake
to two scoops of ice cream, a saving of 209 calories.
That's 18 minutes on the treadmill.
Preeti switched from the chocolate brownie to sticky toffee pudding,
a saving of 350 calories,
30 minutes on the treadmill.
But Maxilie and her family aren't so easily swayed.
I'm keeping my chocolate brownie. I'm keeping the brownie.
What about Keith and Angela?
My son's getting married,
and I do need to lose a stone.
I may have to sacrifice the cheesecake
for a little bit of ice and water.
To help her get into the perfect outfit,
Angela has changed her order from cheesecake to two scoops of sorbet,
a saving of 335 calories or 29 minutes on the treadmill.
That means after showing our new pudding menu to just three tables,
we have a 17% calorie reduction.
Great news for Zoe and her team in the gym.
OK, everybody, the good news is that our calorie total
is going to come down by...
ALL CHEER
894 calories!
We're looking good for hitting our calorie burn target
by the end of service.
It was worth the hundred and something calories!
It was worth it. I'm clapping this.
I've got pudding envy.
I really wanted the cheesecake, but I don't regret it
for the fact that it might bring me one day nearer
to buying that dress for the wedding.
As our diners take the final bite of their brownies,
chomp on the remainder of their cheese
and swallow the last of their sticky toffee puddings,
it's time for me to reveal what's been going on.
Ladies and gentlemen, can I please have your attention
just for a couple of moments?
I hope you all had a very nice lunch.
I just have a confession to make.
This restaurant is not all it seems,
so would you like to follow me?
This way.
Oh, wow!
Wow!
Welcome to the other side of our restaurant.
This is the secret team who has been burning off
every single calorie that you have been eating out there.
Wow!
The total calories consumed is 45,687.
Who had the burger? I did.
The burger comes in at 1,123 calories
which, if we think about cyclists,
that would be five cycling for half an hour,
all five for 30 minutes.
You guys are so happy!
I love the energy.
Knowing what you know now,
do you think you are going to change your eating habits?
100%.
Do you think that you should be able to see when you're ordering
how much exercise you need to do to burn it off
so that you can compare?
I think that would really help.
Then you can make a personally informed choice about it.
For me, I think, if you're going out for a meal,
you should be able to be relaxed and not having to think about calories.
So you're saying you don't want them on there.
You don't want the pictures of the exercising people?
Well, no, because I'm really careful about what I eat anyway.
Well, I'm not!
LAUGHTER
I actually think seeing this would actually change my mind.
I have to say that, when I showed you the menu with the exercises,
you seemed traumatised when you looked at it.
LAUGHTER
I actually was. I actually was, yeah.
What about you? You changed your dessert.
I was happy with my change,
but I don't think it would stop me having a dessert
because it's a treat. and I don't have it every day.
But it might make me choose differently amongst the desserts,
which one I go for.
All that remains now
is for our exercisers to burn the final calories.
That's it, the sprint starts now.
Come on! Come on. Come on, guys.
Come on!
APPLAUSE
Come on, come on, come on!
After working out for three hours and 23 minutes,
our 25 gym buddies are about to smash
through the 45,687 calorie barrier set by our diners.
The last 100 calories!
Whoo! Come on!
And stop!
CHEERING
High-five, well done.
I think these guys have done you proud this afternoon.
INAUDIBLE SPEECH
It worked! I mean, that was an unusual lunch, wasn't it?
Very unusual.
I think that's the most unusual gym session
I've ever been in, in my life.
I mean, it's incredible how long it takes
to burn off the calories that people eat. Yeah.
I mean, looking at some of the faces of the diners,
they seemed quite surprised and to be honest,
the exercisers as well.
As a GP, my thoughts are
that the more information we can give people
to help them make healthier choices, the better
but ultimately, it's up to them.
So will you be skipping dessert in future?
No. I'm just going to do more push-ups.