Nine fruit ‘n’ veg portions a day? Now that’s difficult to stomach: ROLAND WHITE reviews last night’s TV

Five a day: the big scam?

Judgement:

Peter Sellers: The dark side of the goon

Judgement:

Have you ever had a taste for Angel Delight, Pot Noodles or Smash instant mashed potatoes? Then here’s some terrible news: the country’s poor health is largely your fault.

According to Five-A-Day: The Big Con? (Chapter 5), it was the introduction of these foods in the 1970s that sparked the obesity crisis and our strange reluctance to eat vegetables.

This documentary must have set a new record for the amount of bad news that can be crammed into an hour of television. The grim statistics just kept coming.

A quarter of all food produced is wasted. Of the food we do eat, 57 percent is processed. In fact, Britain eats more processed food than anywhere else in the world.

That is very bad for our health. Rickets and scurvy, caused by a deficiency of vitamins C and D, are on the rise. Even worse, our diet can pass on poor health from generation to generation.

One doctor told the programme: ‘If you don’t get enough fruit and vegetables, you can pass on chronic diseases to your grandchildren.’ Apparently it has something to do with our stomach bacteria.

As if all that wasn’t bad enough, the future looks bleak for the British food industry. Nearly 70 percent of our food is imported, and prices are driven up by the war in Ukraine, border problems, energy costs and labor shortages.

The obvious solution is to grow more food at home, but farmers can no longer rely on the Eastern European workers who traditionally picked fruit. We saw a farmer in Kent digging up an orchard, and another farmer explaining why he could no longer afford to grow raspberries.

And then came the final blow. Let alone five, we should actually be eating eight to nine servings of fruits and vegetables a day, from thirty different plants, spread throughout the week. Who has time to keep track?

Even if you achieve that goal, there is a downside. As one doctor advised, “You might get some feedback from your digestive system.” That’s politely said.

Watching Peter Sellers: The Dark Side Of The Goon (Ch5), you may have wondered: why are the people who make us laugh so miserably?

There were interview clips and home movies in which Sellers looked rowdy, but friends found him difficult and unhappy. “Peter loved to laugh, loved to think of funny ideas,” said actress Nanette Newman, “but he never discovered the bluebird of happiness for himself.”

He also pursued women in a way that would get him in trouble today. He once came home and announced that he was in love with Sophia Loren. His wife Anne immediately packed her bags.

“It was very difficult to live with him,” said actress Audrey Nicholson. She was the wife of his best friend, Graham Stark, but that didn’t stop Sellers from suggesting they slept together.

He was, the program suggested, a real-life version of one of his famous film roles: Chance the gardener in Being There, a man without a character.

Only one famous interviewer got Sellers to admit this. “I could never be myself,” he said. ‘There is no me. I don’t exist.’ Sellers was wearing a Viking helmet at the time and the tough, no-nonsense interviewer in question was Kermit the Frog.

CANCEL CANDIDATE: Picasso: The Beauty And The Beast (BBC2) portrayed a moody, manipulative artist who locked his lover indoors when he went outside, refused to acknowledge the African inspiration for his work and sketched his 13-year-old adopted daughter in lascivious poses. In today’s world he wouldn’t have lasted five minutes.

CHRISTOPHER STEVENS is gone.