Ye Gods, this is ... unbelievable! On account of not owning a TV, I'm always pretty shocked when I catch up what the latest development in what passes for entertainment. That's a particularly arsey sentence but I tend to react quite badly to reality TV - I know people *choose* to get involved and I know people *choose* to watch it but it seems so exploitative on so many levels that I generally do my best to avoid it. The lastest Jade Goody racism business was particularly awful - it was just this grotesque exercise in the power of the media.

Another example from the show: much was made of the way that one of the volunteers (again, one of the men) was starving himself because he simply couldn't bring himself to eat any of the food. On one hand, you have to wonder how genuinely hungry the participants were getting if flavour was still a concern for them. On the other hand, how are you going to get someone to eat healthily if you force them to eat food that they don't like? All that's going to do is make them yearn for fried food.

I compared the nutritionists to the childcare experts from Honey We're Killing the Kids for a reason: a TV nanny could have achieved more with the manchildren they picked for this show than a tribe of irritated nomads and a couple of limp doormat nutritionists ever could.

Hmm, my previous comment seemed to actually disappear...

Anyway, there's apparently a fansite at http://fatmencanthunt.com - including web forums where at least a third of the regular posters seem to be the volunteers from the series.