I’m watching both of these shows in their entirety and I don’t know why they’ve historically gotten so much backlash. One reviewer called TBL “a dumpster fire of a TV show” and others seem to think M6L is downright abusive. However, I can’t find anything particularly bad in either.
Although it’s true that in TBL the contestants are losing an egregious amount of weight each week, it’s likely (actually almost certain) that most of this is water weight and it would have been more dangerous to instead not lose the weight. The intense exercise scenes seem pretty typical for anybody who’s serious about athletics. Finally, the famous “damaged metabolism” study that shut down TBL turned out to be debunked due to “damaged metabolism” being a boring, normal adaptation under high physical activity.
And although there are tons of bare naked shower scenes in M6L, everyone knew that going in and they agreed anyway. Some also complain how the stars don’t receive enough support for things like therapy and other cost centers. I would say that would actually have been a great thing to add, but it would be impractical at scale and have a high chance of bankrupting the production with how much healthcare costs, resulting in a net loss of benefit for those who need the surgery.
So, what’s your viewpoint here?
Believe it or not, they aren’t always available. Seriously. Well, not available and in good state.
If you go to some places, usually “bad” areas in cities and very rural small towns (or just rural without any town at all), you end up tempting relying on single source for food. It might be something as relatively useful as a proper bodega, but it can be a gas station instead. Even if the place does stock those staples, they will sit there until they get sold, or get so far past the “sell by” or “best by” date that the owner finally throws them away. So you can go in looking for that stuff, and then it’s so damn old that it doesn’t cook right.
Even out here in the mountains, where you can usually have a small garden, you run into serious issues obtaining other staples to make a complete food source, much less make food be more than just fuel, which can be soul crushing and lead to disordered eating on its own when people do run into a chance to splurge.
Food deserts are a thing, and they drive malnutrition as well as obesity.
That level of scarcity is way more common than people think for those living under the poverty line. And even that assumes that the individuals can cook. You’ve got the disabled that may not be able to, you’ve got people that don’t how how. Even when that isn’t in play, you can run into shitty apartments/rentals that make it difficult to cook no matter what. Places where a stove can be out of order for months without being fixed or replaced, and likely replaced with something that doesn’t work right.
Beyond that, why the fuck is the assumption that the people have been given any kind of nutrition education to know what they can buy that’s healthy? Why is it assumed that living on beans and rice is a good state of being?
It’s real easy for those of us that have had the privilege of good nutritional education to assume all kinds of things, but that doesn’t make the assumptions correct
Btw, that got ranty at the end, it wasn’t directed at you, it’s the situation that’s the infuriating thing.