Finally a use for gold -g-
>>Fat Folks Seek Gold, Stardom Via Big Brother Path
Reuters
Mar 16 2001 12:16PM
HOUTEM, Netherlands (Reuters) - Twelve dieters will compete to win their weight loss in gold in a new reality TV show to hit Dutch screens Saturday.
The makers of "Big Diet" hope to capitalize on the smash-hit success of such shows as the voyeuristic "Big Brother" by adding a new twist: a 13-week fat joke.
"Big Diet" locks away six rotund men and six women in a castle in Houtem, near the southern Dutch city of Maastricht. They will compete to slim down as 37 cameras monitor their every move.
The contestants will be fed low-calorie diets prepared by a celebrity chef, do physical workouts three times a day and sleep communally. Cameras are everywhere except for the bathroom.
Their aerobics classes and a selection of the video from the day will be shown on Dutch TV almost every day.
The men and the women compete in same-sex teams against each other and as individuals within the teams for the chance to win as much as a $406,300.
After four initial weeks of sweating and starving, one person will be thrown off the show each week until only four remain. The weekly loser is the member of the weaker team who sheds the smallest percentage of his or her weight loss target.
The final winner will be chosen from the two best dieters by the audience and he or she will earn in gold the weight lost. The folks desperate enough to join this show will also be subjected to temptations, including a wall-mounted fridge full of their favorite snacks.
"NOT A FREAK SHOW"
"It won't be like a freak show with sausages falling out of every drawer or something, but I can imagine the doorbell will ring and it's a pizza delivery boy with a pizza," Debbie de Jongh, one of the show's on-site producers, told Reuters.
All but one of the contestants say they do not care about the money and are not seeking fame. They simply want the opportunity to escape from their daily lives and lose weight.
Only Eric, a 30-year-old radio presenter for public radio in the Netherlands, admits to being motivated by money.
"My colleagues told me about the program and said I could stand to lose a few kilos," said Eric, who weighs 300 pounds and wants to shed 88 pounds.
"But when I saw the commercial that said you get paid your lost weight in gold ... that was the moment I was interested."
Ray, 33, said he did not even know about the money, and is desperate to lose weight so he can marry his fiancee. She will not wed him until he weighs what he did when they met -- 187 pounds versus his current 284 pounds.
He does not mind being unable to sleep with his girlfriend for 13 weeks, he said. "I'm dreaming about the day I'll lose weight and we can have real sex, without this handicap."
Dutch diet and health organizations criticize the program, saying it feeds off pressure many feel to be model thin and that such fast weight loss could endanger contestants' health.
The show is produced by Telefonica-owned Endemol, which made the hugely successful "Big Brother." That show, which has been exported around the world, locked up nine people in a suburban house and filmed their every move 24 hours a day.
Executive producer John de Mol expects "Big Diet" to be a worldwide hit too. He says he just wants to help the Dutch slim down and rejects criticism that the show is exploitative.
"The fact these people are on a serious diet and in serious training schedules makes them psychologically unstable," De Mol told Reuters. "You can see all the stages they go through to overcome their overweight and see all the temptations they're dealing with and I think that makes interesting TV." << |
