Obesity is a growing issue in the industrialized world generally and the United States in particular. The science behind obesity is still developing, but the popular culture response has already begun. Reality television, which has previously attempted to resolve our lovelessness, joblessness, and lack of fashion has now begun to confront the 'American lifestyle.'
Television network NBC's hit reality series "The Biggest Loser" takes a group of overweight individuals and sequesters them in a large housing and gym facility. There, under the oversight of expert personal trainers and medical personnel, they attempt to lose weight as quickly as possible. Taking place within a competitive team setting, at the end of each week the people who lost the least weight risk being eliminated. At stake is $250,000 cash for the winning player and a $100,000 prize for the eliminated player losing the most weight by the finale.
The Biggest Loser's game-show world bears only loose relation to the reality of an average person looking to drop a few pounds. With each contestant's weight loss announced weekly, this television series provides a wealth of data on weight loss under ideal and controlled conditions. With 6 to 8 daily hours of exercise, a rigidly structured diet organized by top-rate personal trainers along with a strong monetary incentive, participants on The Biggest Loser have every advantage in losing large amounts of weight. Some drop over twenty pounds, or over 5% of their body mass, in a single week. The vast majority go on to change their lives by adopting healthier eating habits and frequent exercise. These results demonstrate weight loss at the absolute limit of human capacity.
While every participant on The Biggest Loser puts in a monumental effort to lose weight, there can only be one winner. Contestants experience different outcomes in weight loss in spite of a generally high standard of effort. There have been many debates in the bio-medical field on whether obesity is caused by genetics, culture, age, or something else entirely, and a consensus has yet to emerge. With its wide demographic variety, The Biggest Loser provides an opportunity to test how these differences impact optimal-scenario weight loss.