Quiz - Fad or Fiction?

Chris Smith put the panellists up against the quiz of the week, which this week focuses on health fads and products. Tom Mole and Dan Gordon teamed up against Sian Porter and Nick Oscroft.

Chris - Round one is diet fad or diet fiction. Can you separate the real diet from the one we made up?

We’re going to have two teams: team 1 we’re going to have Nick and Sian and then team 2 we’re going to have Tom and Dan. Basically, the quiz theme is health -  we have three rounds, with a question each.

Round one is diet fad or diet fiction. Can you separate the real diet from the one we made up? Over to you Nick and Sian.

We’ve got two diets; two to choose from:

WALKING DIET - where you can eat anything you like, provided you only do it when you’re walking

Or - THE FIVE BITE DIET - Eat whatever you want—but only five bites of it.

Which is the real diet?

Sian - The five bites is real.

Chris - You’re going for five bites.

Sian - Yeah.

Chris - Do you concur with that Nick.

Nick - I do.

Chris - The five bite diet does exist but the walking diet doesn’t.

Maybe the walking diet should exist it sounds like a better solution to me.

Chris - Next team: for you Tom and Dan.

The Blood Type Diet - regulate your intake based on your blood type.

Or there’s The ring diet - if it can fit through a ring - you can eat it.

What do you think of that one?

Dan - They both sound crazy.

Tom - They do sound absurd. That doesn’t mean that neither of them exists though. The blood type. A lot of people don’t know that one so I’d hope that that would be the false one.

Tom - Let’s go with the ring one.

Chris - You’re going rings?

Dan - Yeah.

Chris  - The answer is the blood type diet. Now we actually found this round quite hard, because every time we made up a diet we’d find out it did exist.

Round two is called ‘false alarm’. Which of these alarm clocks is actually being sold -
Sian and Nick - is it…

An alarm that screams and runs around the room so that you have to chase it or...

A rubber glove that slaps you repeatedly in the face until you get up and silence it

Nick - I’m going to go with the more ridiculous option which is the rubber glove that slaps you round the face.

Chris - Sian; agree with that?

Sian - Yeah, absolutely.

Chris - The rubber glove is fiction. One of them does exist though because inventor Simone Giertz has built one, but unfortunately - or rather, fortunately - they’re not for sale.

Over to team 2. Which of these exists and which are a fallacy?

An alarm clock in the shape of a gun, which will only turn off once you successfully shoot the target. Or…

An alarm clock in the shape of a bomb which you have to successfully diffuse each morning or it gets louder and louder.

What do you think?

Tom - Both sound quite dangerous.

Dan - I think I’ll go with the gun. It sounds relatively plausible.

Tom - let's go with the gun.

Chris - the gun-shaped alarm clock is the one actually available. Nick - You’re the sleep expert - does it make a difference how your alarm clock wakes you up in the morning?

Nick - There’s some evidence that if it wakes you up during REM sleep then it’s probably not such a good thing for you.

Chris - So if you’re having a dream and the alarm goes off?

Nick - If you’re having a dream, yeah.

Chris - Why is that bad?

Nick - Because I don’t think the human body likes being woken up out of dream sleep and generally the human body likes to wake up naturally. Unfortunately, most of us do wake up with an alarm and most of us use our mobile phones which tends to be the thing that everybody uses the days.

Chris - So if an alarm clock that syncs to brain waves that could work out when you weren't sleeping and, therefore, more sympathetically wrench you out of sleep would be better?

Nick - Yeah. There are devices that attempt to do that but how accurate they are in measuring sleep stage I’m not so sure.

Chris  - Round 3, it’s all to play for. This round is called exercise lies.

So team 1, which is the real exercise product?

The Hawaii chair, which moves in small circles while you work, theoretically toning your abs ...or
The Alaska shoes – large shoes with weights that move around inside the sole, theoretically toning your leg muscle.

Which do you think is the real one?

Nick - I don’t know. I like the idea of the Hawaii hula hoop chair though.

Sian - Yeah.

Nick - Shall we go for that one?

Chris - Going chair?

Sian Yeah.

Chris - The answer is the Hawaii chair, although the company providing it are unsurprisingly no longer in business.

And last question for you Dan and Tom - which one is the real exercise fad?

Hamster wheeling - running in a specially built hamster wheel

Prancercise - the aim of which is to run in the style of a horse to burn off calories. 

Dan - I think I’ve seen the hamster wheel.

Chris - You’re going for hamster wheel.

The answer is prancercise. Hamster wheeling we might have to wait for. Dan - do these kinds of fads or products seem like a good idea to you?

Dan - I actually thought I’d seen it. Maybe it was on one of those crazy shows like Jackass or something.

Chris - It must be true in that case.

Congratulations team 1 for winning, and if you got any of those listening.