In 2013, Dr Michael Mosley changed the way a nation ate. That was the year the broadcaster, who died this week at the age of 67 after going missing on holiday in Greece, released his groundbreaking first book, The Fast Diet. It advocated the “5:2” method of drastically restricting your calorie consumption on two days out of every seven, and was an immediate sensation upon its release. Everyone from celebrity chefs to politicians to the colleague you bumped into in the kitchen seemed to be singing its praises.
As a bemused New York Times report put it, Britain had “develop[ed] a voracious appetite for a new diet”. But popularising the 5:2 – and the overall concept of intermittent fasting – was just one facet of Mosley’s unique broadcasting career, which saw him test out often strange-seeming techniques or take on unusual challenges in the name of learning more about how our bodies work, and how we might lead a healthier life. His self-experimentation, he once admitted to The Guardian, was inspired by his father’s death as a result of complications from diabetes. “No male in my family has made it beyond 72,” he said. “His friends said how much like him I was, so he was kind of a warning from history.”
