Until recently nutrition was a neglected area of medicine but today its a mainstream obsession. In the third episode of Medical Mavericks, Michael Mosley charts the extraordinary lengths doctors have gone to to uncover the connections between what we eat and what we die from.

The programme starts with the story of Doctor William Stark. Stark is a little-known hero of nutrition and the first doctor to systematically record the effect of different foods on his health when he decided to live on nothing but bread and water, then slowly add new foods one at a time.

Plus the stories of Dr Joseph Goldberger, who ate a dying patients excrement and found the true cause of a dreadful epidemic that changed forever what goes into our food, and Dr Victor Herbert who proved the health benefits of folic acid by living on thrice-boiled hamburgers, marshmallows and jelly.

In the programme Michael Mosley also repeats the experiment of Dr Hugh Sinclair who lived on nothing but seal meat and fish oil for six months to demonstrate its effect on his blood.
Michael also meets Dave who practices Calorie Restriction, a lifelong self-experiment with the goal of extending his lifespan by fifty years. Could diet really hold the secret of a life without the diseases of aging? Show less