What’s The Right Diet for You? A Horizon Special starts tonight on BBC Two

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A three part Horizon special investigating the latest weight lost theory to lose weight successfully begins tonight on BBC Two.

BBC Science has teamed up with Britain’s leading obesity scientists to look at a personalised diet that addresses individual causes of overeating.

In Britain today 11 million people are on a diet but the vast majority of them will fail. Most diets are a one-size-fits-all approach but we all put on weight for different reasons. Scientists are currently investigating how differences in our biochemistry, psychology and our genes affect our weight.

Dr Chris Van Tulleken and clinical psychologist Professor Tanya Byron team up with Britain’s foremost nutrition and weight loss scientists from Oxford and Cambridge universities, to put the latest theory to the test.

In this ground breaking experiment, 75 overweight volunteers from across the UK who will be put on personalised diets to explore three particular causes of overeating: genes, gut hormones, and emotion-related eating.

They will then be allocated one of three tailored diets, designed to address the causes of their overeating and the scientists track their progress over three months.

Episode 1

In the first episode the hopeful dieters go through an intensive five day analysis and undergo a series of experiments at a residential diet lab at Liverpool Hope University.

The obesity scientists look at whether the volunteers’ eating behaviour matches biological and psychological test results.

First up, the volunteers are secretly filmed at a non-stop sushi banquet and are closely observed by gut hormone specialist, Professor Fiona Gribble. She wants to test the theory that people who produce less of a gut hormone that signals to the brain when we’re full will eat more at a meal times than other people.

Next, behavioural scientist, Professor Paul Aveyard, tests the power of emotional eating by assessing how individuals in the Emotional Eaters group react to a stressful experience compared to those in a different group.

Finally, the Constant Cravers are put to the test by geneticist Dr Giles Yeo. The latest genetic research into eating behaviour shows that within the human body, there a number of key obesity genes, which – if you have them – can make you want to eat constantly.

At the end of the experiments they reveal which groups the volunteers are in and the personalised diets which will best address their overeating.

Can science succeed where other diets have failed?

Viewers at home can also find out which diet might be right for them by trying the online diet test, available from January 12 at bbc.co.uk/rightdiet.

The first episode will be broadcast tonight (12^th January) on BBC Two at 9pm.