WHAT do pop star Beyonce, daytime TV presenter Phillip Schofield and upwardly mobile Royal sister-in-law Pippa Middleton all have in common? They have all famously shed pounds. And when January comes, along with the inevitable regrets about Christmas overindulgence, who better to turn to than a celebrity for weight loss guidance?
A state of madness befuddles us as we enter the new year. For some reason, we delude ourselves into thinking that things will be different. We will somehow summon that elusive prepossession that enables us to join gyms, lose weight and stop doing all those things that we love doing but that are frowned upon by society.
As soon January approaches, the glossy magazines alongside the cable TV commercial slots are populated by perfect looking people, selling us unbelievable and erstwhile unheard of ways to fight fat and overcome obesity.
So prolific is this new year diet deluge from the seemingly rich and questionably famous that The British Diabetic Association (BDA) has taken it upon itself to release a list of celebrity diets that we would do well to avoid.
The Duchess of York is a fan of what is described as “the Alkaline Diet”, a regime (as the title suggests) that replaces acidic foods with more alkaline fare with a view to changing the make-up of the dieter’s blood and so improving health. I am no expert but even I can agree with the BDA’s description of this diet as being “based on a basic misunderstanding of human physiology”.
I had never heard of the “Pioppi” diet, named after the tiny Mediterranean Italian fishing village recognised as the home of this low-carb, high-fat way of eating. Popular with the former Secretary of State for Health, Andy Burnham, the Pioppi plan asks adherents to avoid added sugar and refined carbs, and instead building their diet around vegetables and fatty foods such as oily fish and olive oil.
Apparently the denizens of Pioppi (described as the world’s healthiest village) enjoy copious amounts of bacon, chocolate and good quality red wine. According to the international bestselling book, The Pioppi Diet, following this quaint, very specific eating regime produces some success. It’s claimed that some of the southern Italian villagers are living a decade longer than most. (Interestingly there seems to be scant evidence for this claim when it comes to linking it to the diet.)
The BDA are equally damning of this seaside village way of eating, referring to it as “not a good idea. A Mediterranean diet is a healthy choice but this has been hijacked here”.
And of course how can one overlook the hardcore “Raw Vegan Diet”. In this regime, beloved by Sting and Gwyneth Paltrow, the challenge of not just being meat and diary-free is taken closer to the edge of impossibility by a refusal to cook anything. (It does seem ironic that the wealthier they get, the less they seem to cook their food.)
But the BDA inform us that “vegan food often contains the same number of calories as non-vegan options and some produce, such as carrots, are more nutritious when cooked”.
I have never been a fan of celebrity culture; it represents all that is wrong with our current way of being. (One need only look across the Atlantic to see how the cult of celebrity has elevated a seedy, sleazy, self-absorbed celebrity to the most powerful man in the world.)
It seems bizarre to me that us regular folk would seek diet advice from millionaires who live in massive houses with huge kitchens stocked with the most expensive produce (organic/biodegradeable/only grown by centre-left Peruvian socialists that formed a workers’ profit share co-operative in 1984), and whose meals are prepared by private chefs, maids and butlers.
Instead of aping the lives of others we should find a way of not needing to spend the first month of every year berating ourselves up for having enjoyed ourselves at that one time of year we are meant to enjoy ourselves. Merry Christmas.
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