Category: Factual & Arts TV; Â鶹Éç THREE
Date: 01.06.2006
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A radical television experiment in which eight people adopt a hunter-gather lifestyle in one of the world's harshest environments has been commissioned by Â鶹Éç
THREE.
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Man's First Diet (working title) will follow four men and women to see if they can live among the San Bushmen of the Kalahari in a remote area of Namibia.
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The series of four 60-minute programmes, commissioned by Specialist Factual Commissioning Editor Emma
Swain, will be made by Cheetah Television, Endemol's new factual production arm.
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Emma said: "I love the idea - this feels like a really
original and entertaining angle on diet.
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"Our Stone Age ancestors lived on the hunter/gatherer diet, or Paleolithic
diet, and many western health problems are a direct result of what we eat today.
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"The Paleolithic diet is the only one that fits
ideally into our genetic make-up. Man's First Diet will find out
how difficult it is for eight people to revert back to the Paleolithic
diet."
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In the series, if the eight westerners want to eat they must pick, dig up, trap, and, where necessary, kill their food.
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Both the men and women must live as their Namibian counterparts do - the men will have to join hunts spending days at a time foraging for food; while the women must live life according to the strict social rules that govern local women.
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All participants will be closely monitored throughout the experiment by experts who will determine whether or not the group is adapting to their new lifestyle or struggling to come to terms with life in an unforgiving environment.
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Â鶹Éç Factual Publicity
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