“This was brave television and not your average health documentary”
Joe Wicks: Licensed to Kill, Channel 4
“The duo’s assessment of the protein-bar and processed-food industry does not hold back. Numerous famous brands are mentioned by name. Nor do they accept half measures as they rope in an expert in food-product development, one of several industry whistleblowers who will help them along the way, to make the worst possible bar that can still legally be described as offering health benefits. Frustratingly, the show ends abruptly just as Killer goes to market, with the fallout of that to be covered in an as-yet unscheduled follow-up. But the basic point has been made, with force.”
Jack Seale, The Guardian
“It pulled zero punches in claiming that some of the ingredients in these bars, which gym bros buy and parents pop in children’s lunchboxes, can increase the risk of illnesses from blood clots and diarrhoea to cardiovascular disease and cancer. This was brave television and not your average health documentary.”
Carol Midgley, The Times
“Wicks was a chipper sort throughout an amiable documentary. But whether by accident or design, Licensed to Kill landed somewhere between consumer information television and a remake of the Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski, with Wicks inheriting the Jeff Bridges mantle of chilled-out dude who never seems entirely aware of what is going on. Whether his novel take on healthy television will do for protein snacks what Jamie Oliver’s campaigning did for turkey twizzlers remains to be seen. Either way, it was clever of Wicks to come at the topic from a different angle – albeit with results that felt hilarious by accident more than by design.”
Ed Power, The Telegraph
“His aim, he insisted on Joe Wicks: Licensed To Kill, is to make politicians and the public aware of how poisonous ultra-processed food [UPF] can legally be, even when it is marketed as a health food. Joe’s a busy chap, of course, and perhaps he simply forgot that, not so long ago, he was enthusiastically selling spurious ‘health products’, and now he is being loudly holier-than-thou.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail
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