Why do we do it? We really need to stop supporting the snake-oil industry. We know there is no such thing as a miracle diet, a magical health cure, a mystical practice or a strange (and always expensive) product that is going to make us youthful, happy and, above all, thin.
When Planet Organic first opened in Westbourne Grove, it was a great shop, with a butcher, fishmonger and baker as well as a good range of veg and groceries. Now a third of the shop is shelf upon shelf of supplements, beauty preparations and diet books; another third is a café; and what meat and fish there is comes in vacuum packages.
You can’t blame the owners. We are addicted to coffee and a cup of it nets the shop about £2 in profit. And they wouldn’t sell all those unnecessary supplements if we didn’t buy them. The profit on a £100 bottle of seaweed detoxifying purge is a lot more than on a £100 basket of real food.
We all know that the way to lose weight is to eat less. If it doesn’t go in, it can’t go on, as my husband John says to me when I reach for a biscuit. Keep under 2,000 calories a day if you’re a woman, 3,000 if you’re a man, and you won’t gain weight. Keep under 1,500 and you will slowly lose it.
All weight-loss diets, however dressed up, boil down to eating less. The Blood Sugar diet, Dopamine diet, Paleo diet, Juice diet, Gut diet, Body and Soul diet, 5:2 diet, Lean in 15 diet, Raw Food diet, Cambridge diet, the New Atkins diet — all restrict one food group or another and so limit calories.
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