Supersize versus Superskinny

Faddy foods, slimming products, diet surgery and extreme weight loss regimes, the UK has gone diet mad. But alongside every new celeb diet launch we’re continually bombarded with confusing food scares and health warnings about the serious dangers of being superslim, so it’s no wonder our relationship with food is becoming increasingly dysfunctional.

Countless people are heading towards obesity, with a diet reliant on junk and convenience food while many others are eating too little in a quest to get a celebrity ‘size zero’ body.

Supersize vs Superskinny is the ultimate magazine show about food, weight and body image. Each hour-long programme will feature a short diet swap between two contributors – all of whom have been medically assessed prior to filming - with wildly contrasting eating habits. The show will see a superskinny undereater swap diet and lifestyle with an overweight overeater. The participants couldn’t be more different in their attitudes towards food, but will discover they are both putting their health in danger with their current diet and lifestyle.

The aim of the five day swap is to make them realise they both have a dysfunctional relationship with food – that eating too much is just as bad as undereating. The swap will kick start a whole new regime of balanced and healthy eating that is meant to re-educate them and transform their relationship with food and weight.

After the swap, the contributors both embark on a medically supervised healthy eating regime. At the end we’ll discover if the two contributors have changed their bad eating habits for good.

Presented by Dr Christian Jessen (Embarrassing Illnesses). Alongside the diet swap, the series will also examine the mine field of issues around weight, food and body image with a series of consumer related strands to help us get our relationship with food back in perspective.

Each week our gonzo journalist Anna Richardson will immerse herself in the world of faddy and celebrity dieting and try out some of its most radical regimes to expose some uncomfortable truths about the quest for size zero.

Plus Gillian McKeith embarks on a mission to help reduce the size of the nation’s rears. There isn’t a woman out there who doesn’t want a firmer, smaller, tinier bottom – so what can you do to stop yours growing out of control? In this cross-series strand Gillian McKeith will take on Britain’s Biggest Bottoms – over 100 of the very largest – and teach us everything we need to know to achieve the perfect slim bum.

Supersize vs Superskinny begins in January on Channel 4.