Well, that’s me never eating a protein bar again. Bars, shakes, powders and snack balls that promise a short-cut to a muscle-building higher protein intake constitute perhaps the biggest food-retail phenomenon of the past decade. And protein bars are at the forefront of the craze: this is doing us good, we tell ourselves, as we struggle to chew through a lump of uncanny matter that resembles a Mars bar from a malfunctioning factory. After watching the bracing campaigning documentary Joe Wicks: Licensed to Kill, that illusion will surely, for millions of consumers, be shattered.
You know Joe Wicks, the baby-faced, curly bobbed geezer who popped up during Covid lockdown and became a star through his easy, positive approach to exercise, leading the nation in daily bursts of squats and star jumps. Now, he’s going down the Jamie Oliver route of using his success – we see the country house fame has bought him, and, boy, it’s a whopper – for good by trying to shame the government into tackling a public health emergency.
Cooking up something demonic … Joe Wicks and Dr Chris van Tulleken in Joe Wicks: Licensed to Kill. Photograph: KEO Films
Protein bars are to Wicks what Turkey Twizzlers were to Oliver, for similar reasons: they are almost always loaded with artificial additives, making many of them what these days is called ultra-processed food. These things are just not natural. The sweeteners and sticky gubbins that lurk within them have been linked to all sorts of health problems, from diarrhoea and other gut issues to an increased risk of stroke, cancer, and what this programme refers to, sweepingly but still frighteningly, as “early death”.
This is true even when the additives are within legal limits, because those legal limits are so weak. Learning this has led Wicks to conceive a stunt that is admirable in its lack of compromise: rather than just politely ask for regulations to be tightened, Wicks plans to demonstrate how useless they are by designing, making, advertising and selling a protein bar that is intentionally harmful to the health of those who eat it.
For this project he teams up with TV health journalist Dr Chris van Tulleken, who for these purposes resides in a laboratory bunker, lit in cold blue and adorned with shelves full of mysterious white powder and inscrutable clear liquid. The evil-professor vibes might be theatrical, but it’s obvious that Van Tulleken’s anger at the rise of what he calls “industrially produced edible substances” – he thinks “food” is a generous misnomer – is anything but. As he likens the prevalence of ultra-processed foods to the collective delusion of the mid-20th century, when the populace believed smoking was safe because companies who sold cigarettes had arranged for them to think that, he is visibly a man at the end of his patience.
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.
With the demon bar made – marketing boffins come up with the cutely double-edged brand name “Killer” – the film takes a fascinating turn. Wicks, understandably, wobbles at the prospect of going through with the scheme and knowingly foisting poison on the public. The staff at Wicks HQ have to sign waivers before they taste-test the bar; his lawyer, a specialist in getting these things to market, says the Killer is legally fine but not something she would eat herself. Smiling, bouncing Joe Wicks faces a spiky ethical dilemma. Those YouTube videos where he did a bit of light aerobics feel a long way away. But Wicks still remembers growing up in poverty, and eating junk food without the means or knowledge to buy something better. He is torn.
Totally torn … Joe Wicks and Dr Chris van Tulleken need to decide whether they can stomach feeding people the ‘killer’ bar they know to be harmful. Photograph: Anthony Harvey/Shutterstock for Channel 4
Van Tulleken puts him straight. “We have to think in revolutionary terms,” he says, not in the least perturbed by a relatively small number of people potentially ingesting carcinogens at his behest for the benefit of the cause. Suddenly, Licensed to Kill, with its unabashed anger at rampant commercialism and its belief that the problem has gone far enough to demand radical, even reckless political action, feels like it might be part of something wider than an argument about snack food.
At least, it will be when it’s a complete story. 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. If Licensed to Kill leaves you hungry for more, maybe have an apple or a handful of nuts.
