Supersize Vs Superskinny (2008–2014)

Christian Jessen: Self - Presenter, Self - Host

Quotes 

• Himself - Presenter : This is a diabetic medication. We've got a blood pressure pill here. And this is an antacid tablet.

  Betsy : I constantly have heartburn, indigestion.

  Himself - Presenter : Very strong painkiller here.

  Betsy : I take it 3 times a day for the pain in my knees, my legs and my back.

  Himself - Presenter : When you're carrying a lot of weight around, it's sort of grinding away on these joints. What about you, Laura? Do you have aches and pains?

  Laura : I've got back pain and knee pain.

  Himself - Presenter : You're just the same then.

  Betsy : I have a vitamin D deficiency, I'm severely anemic, I have a thinning wall in my heart.

  Himself - Presenter : Cholesterol pills, to avoid heart disease obviously. And then you have aspirin as well, so this is a blood thinner to help prevent clots; again, if you're overweight, the risk of blood clots is quite high.

  [later] 

  Himself - Presenter : And you're not on lots of medications, are you?

  Laura : I'm not on anything.

  Himself - Presenter : You're not on anything.

  [to Betsy] 

  Himself - Presenter : But I'll bet that's what you said 10 years ago, didn't you?

  Betsy : Five.

  Himself - Presenter : Five years ago you could've said that. So you see how quickly and suddenly it hits you, but this is all preventable, this doesn't have to happen to you at all.

• Himself - Presenter : I want to really show you why it's so important that you change your eating habits, okay, because actually it WILL lead to disease and it will lead to ill health and I'm going to talk to you about some of those things. You know what that is?

  Joanne : No.

  Keith : No I don't.

  Himself - Presenter : That's a cataract, you've heard of cataracts?

  Keith , Joanne : Yeah.

  Himself - Presenter : This person is probably completely blind. And they're completely blind because of deficient of vitamin A. Vitamin A you get from fish, butter, it's added into dairy products, to yogurts. Not getting enough of it can affect your eyes, does that shock you?

  Keith , Joanne : Yeah.

  Himself - Presenter : Did you know that poor diets can do something as dramatic as that?

  Keith , Joanne : No.

• Himself - Presenter : Because patients here are getting bigger and bigger, regular ambulances can no longer cope to transport them, so the hospitals have had to call in the services of these new super sized ambulance to transport their obese and super obese patients.

• Himself - Presenter : Taiwanna is only 48, which in medical terms is very young, and for me the really sad part is the fact that all of this could've been prevented if Taiwanna had only managed her weight and her diabetes better early on, but now there's no going back.

• Betsy : [at 540 pounds]  It's difficult, I have to find a hospital that can suit my size, in fact they've actually talked about resorting to have to go to the local zoo to be able to use the equipment.

  Himself - Presenter : They were serious?

  Betsy : They were *very* serious.

• Narrator : Britain's getting bigger, by 2030 it's predicted a fat 40% of us will be obese. But across the pond, one town is almost there. Evansville, Indiana, is America's fattest city. 37.8% of its population are obese. Dr. Christian's been witnessing the devastation it's causing, to make darn sure us Brits don't follow suit.

  Hospital worker : The heaviest patient I've lifted is 765 pounds.

  Himself - Presenter : Wow, well over 50 stone then.

• Himself - Presenter : Josh, we're going to start with you, and we're going to start with your breakfast.

  [cigarettes come down the feeding tube] 

  Himself - Presenter : You are kidding me! Do you always start the morning with a fag, do you?

  Josh : It's one of the best ones of the day.

  Himself - Presenter : Sorry, Louise, I do apologize. Bare in mind I'm not going to make you smoke the fags.

  [to Josh] 

  Himself - Presenter : Let's look at your actual breakfast, what you actually eat.

  [nothing comes down the tube, he taps it] 

  Josh : I don't eat breakfast.

  Himself - Presenter : So by lunchtime you're obviously quite peckish.

  [more cigarettes fall down the tube] 

  Narrator : Or maybe not.

  Himself - Presenter : How often do you tend to eat lunch in a week?

  Josh : Maybe 3 times a week, something like that.

  Himself - Presenter : [a burger falls]  Fast food, a cup of soup, this all says to me 'I don't really want to cook anything'.

• Himself - Presenter : [to Josh]  The only bit of fresh fruit or veg that you had in the entire week was the little bit of limp lettuce in the fajita, that's it. You are essentially starving.

• Himself - Presenter : So this is my gallery, gallery that's very specific to you. Come look at this picture here. What's going on there?

  Josh : It looks like alopecia, hair loss.

  Himself - Presenter : Hair is protein. Protein is very important to the body for building muscles, maintaining, regenerating, repairing, if you're not getting enough of it in your diet, what is the point of your body wasting protein to grow hair? Come over look at this picture next. What do we think here?

  Josh : Bad teeth.

  Himself - Presenter : You've heard of scurvy, it's something that sailors got, because they used to live off of very limited diet with very little fresh fruit and vegetables. Gums bleed, they swell, teeth fall out, they get very poor, you get horrible sores on your body, your skin becomes very dry and crusted. Deficiency of vitamin C leads to scurvy, *you're* deficient in vitamin C, but there's an added issue with you. Smokers' requirements of vitamin C are about double nonsmokers' requirements. What's that?

  Josh : A heart I think.

  Himself - Presenter : Can you see these parts here? They're blackened. That heart muscle has been deprived of oxygen and has died. That person died of a heart attack. It's a complete myth that only fat people have cholesterol deposits, blocked arteries and get heart attacks. Super skinny people are *just* as much at risk.

  Narrator : Heart disease is the UK's biggest killer, responsible for a quarter of premature deaths in men. At risk are the 60% who don't eat their 5 a day, and smokers, who are twice as likely to have a heart attack. Guilty of both, Josh could be heading for an early grave.

  Josh : If I keep going the way I'm going, I'm going to lose all my hair, my teeth and eventually my life. Shit.

• Himself - Presenter : [at the Women's Hospital]  They deliver 750 babies every month here, around half of the expectant mothers are obese. That means complications to both mother and baby, including high birth weight babies, high blood pressure, gestational diabetes, and DVT.

• Himself - Presenter : This is a bit different, it's not a photograph, it's an x-ray obviously, and it's an x-ray of what?

  Joanne , Keith : Spine.

  Himself - Presenter : Yeah, what's the name of the condition?

  Joanne : Osteoporosis.

  Himself - Presenter : What is it?

  Joanne : It's thinning of the bones.

  Himself - Presenter : It's loss of bone mass, and therefore loss of bone strength, which then leads to breakages and fractures. Causes of osteoporosis can be vitamin D deficiency, calcium deficiency, very very painful.

• Himself - Presenter : So tell me your thoughts looking at you now.

  Emma : [watching stock images of herself]  Very bony and old wrinkly skin. Old.

  Himself - Presenter : You keep saying old, which is interesting.

  Emma : Yeah.

  Himself - Presenter : Is that something that plays on your mind?

  Emma : No, not really, I just didn't think that my skin looked that bad.

  Himself - Presenter : And from a medical point of view looking at your skin, yeah I would agree with you, I think it is slightly damaged and aged more than I would expect. Your diet to an extent can help protect that. Minerals like selenium and zinc are really really good at wiping up those free radicals. You as you now know, are not getting enough of those things in your diet, in fact you're deficient in them. And I would think that's why it's more apparent. But one of the biggest things is you're in control of all this, all you have to do is eat more.

  Emma : I always thought I had a really healthy diet, thought I was getting the right nutrients and minerals and vitamins, but yeah it's quite shocking when you find otherwise, thought you've been doing it right all along when you haven't. It's a big shock.

• Himself - Presenter : Hi Melissa.

  Melissa Bushnell : Nice to meet you.

  Himself - Presenter : I'm Christian, the strange doctor from England.

  [Melissa laughs] 

  Narrator : Dr. Christian wants to understand how Melissa's experience of miscarriage is affecting her.

  Melissa Bushnell : I was not taking care of myself, and I was taking care of my mom, she was dying at the time from liver failure, and so I was taking care of her when I got pregnant, I was taking care of someone else when I should've been taking care of myself. And I was so happy to find out I was pregnant 3 days after Christmas, and then to lose the baby, which was the most awful thing in my life.

  Himself - Presenter : I don't think we can say that your miscarriage was a result of your weight, I don't think that would be fair at all. But there is a very important message here, pregnancies when you're overweight and obese are so much harder, so that's why it's really important you guys are working harder at this.

  Melissa Bushnell : If I can help her to not get where I am when she's my age, then my job is done.

• Himself - Presenter : [to Lauren]  It is easy to get where to the place Bettie Jo is now, it is easier than you think. It's kind of this sobering warning I wanted to give you. It will just happen, and I know it doesn't just happen overnight, but it will creep up on you because every day that you don't do something about it, every day you have your 6-7-8 thousand calorie junk food day which is pretty much every day for you, it just adds a little more weight, a little more weight, and the more weight you put on, the less you can exercise and the harder and harder it gets.

• Himself - Presenter : Oh my goodness me, it looks like a hot tub.

  Keith Davis, Goliath Casket Inc. : This is our largest casket, it's 52 inches wide, it'll hold over 1,000 pounds.

  Himself - Presenter : So we're talking 70, 80+ stone, how many of these are called for?

  Keith Davis, Goliath Casket Inc. : In the 1990s, this casket didn't even *exist*. In 2000, we sold 12, and we're selling about 4 of this type per month.

  Himself - Presenter : Can I look inside? Is that alright?

  Keith Davis, Goliath Casket Inc. : Absolutely.

  Himself - Presenter : Oh, it's heavy. It's, absolutely mind blow-boggling.

  Keith Davis, Goliath Casket Inc. : Well you can actually get three people in this casket. This casket will require probably two grave plots, maybe three, it won't fit in a hearse.

  Himself - Presenter : And I would imagine the person that's going into this size is not very old either.

  Keith Davis, Goliath Casket Inc. : Unfortunately not. The average age for my records is around 45 years old. We've had large caskets, not this size, but large caskets for as young as 11 years old.

  Himself - Presenter : I'm, really distressed.

  Keith Davis, Goliath Casket Inc. : We're going to see the first generation that's *not* going to live as long as their parents lived, because of this.

  Himself - Presenter : When you tell me you've seen 11 year olds, I just... I'm at a loss for words, I'm really upset by that. And I know this happens, but when you see the box that you actually use, it's no exaggeration, this isn't a film set.

  Keith Davis, Goliath Casket Inc. : This is a real casket.

  Narrator : One leading UK manufacturers has quoted 15% of the coffins they supply are now classed as 'outsized', and they've seen a tenfold rise in demand for these in just 10 years.

  Keith Davis, Goliath Casket Inc. : We have it too easy too much, you go to a fast food restaurant, a standard beef patty used to be six ounces, now they're 10, 12, a third of a pound of hamburger, are you kidding me? Who needs a third of a pound of hamburger? No one, no one, we think more is better, more is not better.

  Narrator : It's clear that obesity is a disease that has far reaching effects, in death as well as in life.

• Self - Presenter : I'm going to show you a picture.

  Lucy : [gasps]  Oh.

  Self - Presenter : That's someone who actually is anorexic.

  Lucy : [in horror]  It's disgusting.

  Self - Presenter : And who has purposely under-eaten, it's skeletal, and the reason it's skeletal is cuz all the muscle has been, you know, reabsorbed by the body in a desperate attempt for it to get some energy. And my worry is that your level of control and paranoia over what you eat may well mask any sense of reality, so that you do get to that stage without even realizing it.

  Lucy : I can see it now, see that's not what I want to look like. If my daughter came home looking like that...

  Self - Presenter : You'd be extremely worried, wouldn't you?

  Lucy : Yeah, I can see now what everyone's been telling me.

  Self - Presenter : You just need to relax about your food, you need to enjoy it, you need to let go a little bit.