Soap characters aren’t healthy

Private healthcare company Bupa has accused soaps of missing the “health message” to its viewers and has published a list of the ten most unhealthiest soap characters to prove their point.

Bupa, the private health-care company, has released a list of ten soap characters that it claims are the unhealthiest from all of the soaps. The list is part of Bupa’s warning about soaps and the health messages they send out. Bupa claims that soaps aren’t using their position with viewers to send out health messages and are instead promoting unhealthy life-styles.

Recently a report by Derby University claimed that in the average episode of ITV soap Emmerdale 17 units of alcohol were consumed by the soap’s characters which could mean many of the characters would be “depressed drinkers”, according to guidelines laid down by the department of health.

A BBC spokesperson said that its soap, EastEnders, always tried to depict illnesses accurately. Several of the soaps characters feature in the list of unhealthiest characters with chain-smoking Dot Cotton topping it. Other Enders characters in the list are; Heather Trott, Shirley Carter & Charlie Slater. Most of the characters within the list are their because of “poor diet”.

Unhealthy Soap Characters:

Dot Cotton, EastEnders: Smoker

Shadrach Dingle, Emmerdale: Alcohol dependant

Tyrone Dobbs, Coronation Street: Unhealthy diet

Heather Trott, EastEnders: Unhealthy diet

Louise Summers, Hollyoaks: Drinks too much alcohol

Shirley Carter, EastEnders: Alcohol dependant

Charlie Slater, EastEnders: Unhealthy diet

Lloyd Mullaney, Coronation Street: Unhealthy diet

Fiz Brown, Coronation Street: Unhealthy diet

Leo Valentine, Hollyoaks: Drinks too much alcohol

Pictured Top: Dot Cotton as imaged by Central Television’s satirical puppet series Spitting Image.