Articles by Malcolm on ArticleSnatch.com

Dieting Papers Over The Cracks In Official Obesity Strategy

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Dieting these days is simply assumed to be an ongoing lifestyle activity to fit into our lives alongside our work, our social obligations and everything else which makes up the bedrock of our ongoing routines. This is what it has come to. Continual dieting is there alongside the conversational commonalities of everyday life, on a level with marital/partnership status, car ownership and whether or not one keeps a cat. It is high time to look again at what is driving this dieting thing as an activity of everyday normalisation, with it frequently not even being mentioned any longer in the context of a temporary behaviour very specifically related to an outcome of permanently reigned-in weight. All of this matters so much because the tendency is now to treat as an accepted banality an issue which has in fact become a largely unnoticed but major tension point between state encroachment and personal choice. Worse than that, it is not just about liberty, it is also about bad science and poor advice. Dieting is often about being in control, or being controlled (and sometimes about both at the same time). People talk about the increasing complexity of modern life. **End Summary** Topics: dietig]]>]]> About the Author: ]]> Malcolm Evans is founder and secretary of The Weight Foundation, a registered charity which researches dieting and conducts weight loss research.

Is Dieting A New Kind Of Slavery?

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0400

For something that is meant to offer freedom and happiness, dieting sure has a habit of making prisoners of startling numbers of people. With it now being 200 years since the abolition of slavery in Britain, a move which strangled the great wave of Afro-American stolen people into the New World and started the countdown towards the eventual outlawing of US slavery itself, perhaps now is the time to take proper stock of the real reasons behind this more modern scourge. Whilst no-one should take the metaphor too far and fully equate the visceral agonies of slavery with the emotional imprisonment of lifelong food issues (that would be an insult to those who suffered and died in a foreign land), neither should we ignore the pain and indignity of self-image distress. And the fact very much remains that dieting is not a simple choice or a self-elected misery for which individuals can simply assume full responsibility for the cause, or hence full responsibility for the cure. Knowledge and techniques are in the this case a prerequisite for freedom. **End Summary** Topics: dieitng]]>]]> About the Author: ]]> Author Malcolm Evans is founder of The Weight Foundation charity, which researches dieting and publishes commentary on weight loss culture.

Reduce Your Fatprint

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0400

One in six of the UK's children is now clinically obese screams the latest shocking weight-related headline the US passed this threshold some time ago. But it is not the raw numbers that should be causing the most alarm but rather the manner in which they are presented. Everything to do with weight is being presented as if it was part of the landscape; a tree, a stream, a landslip. It is as if it is a natural phenomenon over which human beings have very little control. In so far as any notion of responsibility or force for change is even admitted, it is pushed away on to third parties, including schools, the food production industry, the government, or retailers. It is always someone else's fault, someone else's responsibility. It is something that just happens, not an issue to which we actively contribute. This week happens to be the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery by the UK parliament. This is something that was many decades in the making and it was only when a growing groundswell of enlightened opinion could see beyond greed and racism that a tipping point of emancipatory consciousness was finally reached. **End Summary** Topics: dieting]]> weight loss]]>]]> About the Author: ]]> Author Malcolm Evans is founder of The Weight Foundation registered charity conducts research into problem eating and dieting and publishes research and commentary on weight loss .

Weight Loss Is About Filling Your Soul With Good Things

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0500

There has been much debate recently over the ethics of various Christian groups who have been making weight loss and weight control the focus of their evangelistic mission. These various bodies for Christ movements claim with varying degrees of moral dogmatism that slimness is next to Godliness and that obesity is a sin. Many others are simply condemning such messages as just the latest absurdity to inhabit that crossover point between established religion and surreal consumerism. But perhaps the issue deserves a much closer look, if not from a personal belief standpoint then perhaps with regard to the psychology of natural, lasting and painless weight loss. Something will always strike you if you visit a mainstream place of prayer, and it doesn't have to be a Christian house of worship; it can also be from amongst the World's rich heritage of other great monotheistic religions. And for those of us obsessing about our weight, or caught up in long-term and futile dieting cycles, this differentiating detail is very, very obvious indeed. The rate of overweight amongst these congregations is often way below the societal average. **End Summary** Topics: dieting]]> weight loss]]>]]> About the Author: ]]> Author Malcolm Evans is founder and secretary of The Weight Foundation charity which campaigns against fad dieting , publishing dieting research and and commentary on weight loss culture.

Dieting The Blame Game Gets Worse

Sun, 11 Feb 2007 00:00:00 -0500

When no-one knows what's going on, or where to look for answers and when the panic begins to set it that's when the witch hunts begin. It's starting to get nastier as we journey through yet another year amid claims of an ever expanding obesity problem, yet still with no serious answers being advanced by either our political leaders or through the mass media. In recent times the debate has already segmented along predictable political and class lines. The Right sees it all as a matter of personal responsibility (which is synonymous with morality, so frequently a convenient differentiator from people not quite like us). The Left has its own over-simplistic assumptions. Just as Big Oil must take the lion's share of responsibility for our growing environmental crisis, so it is Big Food which must accept prime blame for our growing obesity crisis. In Europe, if it is the US's Big Food which can be fingered, all the better it fits in with the existing anti-US world view blame game. The net upshot of this existing polarization is to be expected very little practical or useful will now be discussed or advanced within the political arena. **End Summary** Topics: dieting]]> diet]]> obesity]]> weight loss]]>]]> About the Author: ]]> Author Malcolm Evans is founder and secretary of The Weight Foundation charity, which researches dieting and provides analysis and commentary on weight loss culture.

Dieting We Are More Muddled Than Ever

Sun, 11 Feb 2007 00:00:00 -0500

The sheer scale of confusion over obesity and dieting in the West has been brought home by four major announcements within the space of just a few days. Whilst this particular battleground is the UK, the overall shape of the war is almost exactly the same in every country from mid-Europe to North America, not forgetting Australasia. It's been a little slow cranking-up in the UK this New Year - it's probably because 2006 was a period of even more intense hysteria than usual and hence the expected frantic outpouring has been a little muted (You would have expected every D-class celebrity to have been declaring publicly by now "2007 will really be the year when I finally crack my weight issues.") But it all began to fall back neatly into place towards the end of January, this year at the big issue, macro-level..... ......4 separate news stories, 4 major themes - and a depressing stew they make, too: Government cluelessness; overweight ghettoisation; lifelong dieting imprisonment; a shifting blame game. **End Summary** Topics: dieting]]> diet]]> weight loss]]> obesity]]>]]> About the Author: ]]> The Weight Foundation is a registered charity operating internationally which attempts to replace dieting despair with lasting solutions for natural weight loss .

Dieting Salvation Lies In Your Mind Not Your Mouth

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 00:00:00 -0500

No area of human addictions is so badly served or exploited as that relating to food, eating and dieting. The very same substances that form the food and eating addictions are being repackaged and represented as the possible cure a proposition utterly ridiculous as soon as one steps back and sees the context. It is like producing a range of slightly blunter blades for the self-harming, or slightly reduced moonshine for alcoholics, or boxing gloves for the domestically violent. Yet a similar kind of lunacy continues within the food arena, with every conceivable variety of lo-calorie, lo-fat, lo-carbohydrate or lo-sugar being promoted as the cure to all one's underlying eating, weight and self-image issues. - Is food your problem? Then, hey, come right over here because we have more food that just happens to be your personal solution! But legislation is rarely the right answer to these things. Calls for tightening regulations governing what the Food Industry can produce and what it can promote are little better than dead end by-ways on the road forwards to lasting solutions. Education is what is needed. **End Summary** Topics: diet]]> diets]]> dieting]]> weight loss]]> weight control]]>]]> About the Author: ]]> Malcolm Evans is founder and secretary of The Weight Foundation dieting research charity, which develops free weight loss resources.