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Saturday 21 January 2012

Shaping the future

I am rather overwhelmed and deeply flattered to find that I have a younger audience who read my blog.  This article is probably one of the most important ones to read.

The Diet Industry is a multi-billion pound con-trick.  This quote sums it up:

"The dieting industry is the only industry that I know of that can sell a consumer a product and then blame the consumer for it not working."

Diets don't work.  Please don't get sucked into a vortex of self-recrimination, insecurity and misery based on what you look like.  Please don't spend your (or your parents') hard earned money on following some expensive fad, that is often unhealthy (both physically and mentally) and dangerous.

It is time to stand up to the bullies who aren't interested in you, but are out to cream off every penny in profit that they can.  These diets are sold to you with little or no evidence-base.  Your generation can be the ones to make a difference and stop both men and women torturing themselves to conform to an ideal that is based not on science, but on the misconception that being thin is about self-control and therefore makes you a better, cleverer, more worthy member of society. It doesn't.  It just makes you miserable and misery shows in your eyes and on your face.

If you need further encouragement, that following a over-controlled, permanent hungry life shows on your face, just look at these pictures:

3 comments:

  1. Nigella is beautiful. This comparison reminds me a little of the "face vs ass" dilemma. One of the actresses on Friends was quoted years ago as remarking that after a certain age, one had to choose between their face and their ass, meaning that having an acceptable butt for Hollywood past the age of 35 or so meant not having enough body fat for a healthy looking face (her observation, not mine!). Nigella has a lovely radiant face, and I'm thinking that the issue here may well be levels of body fat as much as nutritional content of dietary intake.

    Howeveeer, if we were comparing Gillian and Nigella on appearance alone as two women of the same age rather than two women of the same age who approach food in strikingly different ways ("clean" eating vs no-guilt-allowed indulgence), I would refuse to play along, because putting skinny women down is just as unhelpful as fat-shaming. Not that I'm saying that's what you're doing here Charlotte, because Gillian McKeith markets herself on her healthy approach to life and therefore it seems logical to comment on how healthy she looks (or not, as the case may be). But I personally get annoyed by stuff about "real women" and arguments over whether curvy women are more beautiful. Regardless of my own body size, I don't think we should try to dictate what women (or men) should look like (not talking about people with anorexia here because that's a separate issue). Sometimes I feel like the "skinny rules!" "no, curvy rocks!" shit propagated in the media is just an issue of divide and conquer - pit the two groups against eachother so they will focus on infighting and not realise that they are all being fed a lot of dangerous rubbish.

    I'm getting remarkably opinionated in my so-not-old age :P

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  2. Katie

    My lovely. I know you are less than half my age but I was talking about teenagers (Gulp) reading my blog. My view is to get them while they're young (insert evil laugh) and was using the age old photograph to demonstrate not so much that McKeith is an idiot (which she is) but that diets don't work.

    As you know I loathe the whole "Preventing eating disorders by loving your body" malarkey - no evidence base, no way of proving it works, lots of money that would be better spent on treatment etc etc etc BUT I think the diet industry is evil and it preys on younger and younger children. Combined with the present anti obesity hysteria and the focus on "healthy" eating and the complete nonsense that "fat is bad for you", I worry that our children are being pushed into hogwashed by the diet companies into believing that they too should diet because everyone else does. The diet industry meanwhile, counts their piles of gold from selling low-fat food (which is stuffed with other crap instead of fat!) and low calorie crisps (WTF is the point of that?).

    We are being led, blindfolded, by big industry, with their advertising millions, into a perpetual war with food....xx

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  3. Yeah, I wasn't disagreeing with you at all and I am just as alarmed by the dogmatic messages about healthy eating peddled by schools and the government, I just went off on a tangent! Your blog seems to inspire tangents in me Charlotte, but I should really stop waffling so much...

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