Zoe Harcombe comments on Media articles

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS BLOG HAS MOVED >>>>

2009-09-30T13:18:00.001+01:00

All blog posts have been transfered to my new website and this members blog can be viewed here...New BLOG

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Very best wishes - Zoe

Breakfast stubbed out

2009-09-03T14:07:00.003+01:00

Daily Mail. September 2, 2009.

"More than 1.2 million children begin the day by eating junk food or smoking cigarettes instead of having a proper breakfast", a survey shows.

Regular readers of this blog will know I have little regard for parents who don't give their children the most important thing they can give them - health. Being a great parent is not about being able to provide branded trainers, it's about inspiring your offspring to be the best people they can be. They can't even start to achieve in this increasingly demanding world, without basic health.

To send a child off to school without a decent breakfast inside them is negligent. On the other hand, this survey was commissioned by Kelloggs - no doubt looking to see if they can get the 30% of girls and 20% of boys, who don't have breakfast at home, to have a bowl of sugary cereal instead. This is just as bad as sending the child out for the day with an empty stomach.

Great breakfasts for children are bacon and eggs, omelettes, whole meal toast and marmite (if they love it), fruit, natural yoghurt, and/or sugar free cereals like porridge/shredded wheat (there aren't many). Frosties, Cornflakes and other sugary cereals are not the best start to the day.

The smoking bit came from the fact that many parents are giving children money to get breakfast on the way to school and some kids are getting cigarettes instead. If your child comes home smelling of ciggies, no more breakfast money!

Follow "Breakfast Stubbed Out" post at www.Zoeharcombe.com

Slimming Drug Investigated over liver damage claim

2009-08-29T11:15:00.001+01:00

Western Mail. 26 August, 2009.

GlaxoSmithKline are the makers of the weight loss pill "Orlistat" (known as "Xenical" on prescription or "Alli", now available over the counter).

This article noted that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is reviewing 30 reports of serious liver damage, in people who have been taking the drug, 6 of which resulted in organ failure. GSK, of course, are trying to reassure users that there is no connection to liver damage.

I don't know if there is any connection between Orlistat and liver damage - I welcome the FDA review, so that this can be determined through investigation. One of the many functions of the liver, however, is to manage the removal of waste products and Orlistat does have quite an impact on waste product management...

Orlistat works on the basis that fat is not digested by the body until it reaches the colon. So Alli/Xenical tries to ensure that any fat rushes through the colon and into the toilet, before it can be digested at all. You can probably work out the key downside already – some people reportedly don’t even make it to the toilet before the tablet works! The product information advises wearing dark trousers and carrying a spare change of clothes. Nice!

It is so sad that people are so desperate to slim that they will try something with such embarrassing side effects before trying something as simple as eating real food and nothing but real food. i.e. The Harcombe Diet.

Keep an eye out for the FDA conclusions and so will I.

Follow this post over at www.zoeharcombe.com

Chocolate twice a week 'protects heart victims'

2009-08-28T12:13:00.003+01:00

Daily Mail. August 15, 2009.

No surprise that I liked this article! As a regular consumer of 85%+ cocoa dark chocolate...

A Swedish study has shown that heart attack survivors, who eat dark (real) chocolate regularly are nearly 70% less likely to die from cardiac problems than those who rarely eat it. Even a weekly treat can help, almost halving the risk of death from heart problems.

The findings were published in the Journal of Internal Medicine. Previous studies have already shown that dark chocolate, which is rich in antioxidants, can lower the risk of blood clots, protect against bowel cancer and even help prevent premature births. Antioxidants protect the body from ageing caused by free radicals.

There were some very interesting stats in the article: Every year, 270,000 people in Britain suffer a heart attack. About a third die before reaching hospital - invariably because they delay seeking help, as that recent powerful advert was designed to illustrate.

The Swedish study involved 1,169 patients aged between 45 and 70, who had been admitted to hospital with a heart attack between 1992 and 1994. Each one was questioned on their dietary habits, including how much chocolate they ate and they were followed up for a further decade.

Junk Food Dummies

2009-08-14T17:31:00.002+01:00

Daily Mail. August 14, 2009.

This article had me shaking my head in disbelief. When are we going to change our thinking about fats and carbs?!

Some scientists at Oxford University have fed a junk food diet to rats and they concluded that in just 9 days, a high fat diet damaged the rats' short term memory, made them significantly less alert and significantly decreased their ability to exercise. The scientists are now studying the effects of a short-term high fat diet on humans.

So, what's wrong with this? This is not a control experiment! The junk food fed to the rats included burgers and chips - so the team have not in fact proved anything to do with fat, as the carbs are more likely to have been the cause of any observations made. I have never seen a single study where people eating plain meat/fish/eggs/dairy products perform anything other than very well. I have seen numerous studies where people eating sugar, white flour and refined carbohydrates have carbohydrate induced stupors.

The only way to show if fat is the issue with the rats is to feed them fat and only fat! Exactly the same error occurred with the Ancel Keys "Seven Countries Study" (1956-1970). This is the source of all current views that saturated fat is bad for you and causes high cholesterol, which causes heart disease. I do not believe that there is any evidence for this and nor do many other health researchers. What Keys did was to observe the diets of 7 countries and the fat content in each and conclude that Japan has lower heart disease than America and a lower fat diet, so there is the answer! Japan also consumed (at the time) bugger all sugar and white flour and America consumed loads! What Keys more likely observed, therefore, was an association between a high refined carb diet and heart disease. Even then, an association doesn't mean a causation.

Please scientists - stop having a premise and setting out to prove it and do genuine unbiased experiments and report the results as you find them.

What women really want is... an hourglass like Nigella's

2009-07-30T09:50:00.007+01:00

Daily Mail. July 22, 2009.

Every woman loved this article! Apparently we don't want to look like Posh Spice or Kate Moss - we want an hourglass figure like Nigella Lawson. Nigella topped the poll of the figure women most want for themselves and other real women (Kate Winslett, Holly Willoughby and Kirstie Allsopp) were also in the top 10.

Only 13% of women described themselves as hourglass, but 65% wanted to have this shape. For those of you who study "Dressing to look your best" for a living (as my friend Beth Price does), you will know that there are two hourglass shapes described on the full list. The full list of shape options that we women have are: full hourglass (Nigella); neat hourglass (Natalie Portman); triangle (used to be called pear - J-Lo); inverted triangle (Demi Moore); lean column (Tilda Swinton), rectangle (Rachel Hunter) and round (anything up to Dawn French!).

So, not only do women want an hourglass shape, we want the 'full' option. Way to go girls!

Follow "What Women Really Want" over at www.zoeharcombe.com

Why Calorie Counting Makes you fat

2009-07-29T17:08:00.003+01:00

Daily Mail. July 21, 2009.

I got very excited when I saw this headline. At last, I thought, someone else has realised that calorie counting is the cause of the obesity epidemic and not the cure. But no, the article was about a new report by Dr Geoffrey Livesey, one of a “growing band of scientists” who think we have got the way we calculate calories wrong. Wilbur Olin Atwater’s original ‘calorimeter’, from over 100 years ago, is apparently inaccurate (surely not!) and a glass of wine may actually have ‘only’ 115 calories and not 120, whilst a bacon sandwich may have 18 calories more than we thought it did.

When are we going to see calories for what they are – fuel – and not the enemy to be avoided?! I wrote in my Harcombe Diet Club newsletter for April about the Kekwick & Pawan article in The Lancet (view newsletter here). As far back as 1956 we had all the evidence we needed that it is what we eat, not how much, that is the key to weight and weight loss.

If you want some calorie inaccuracies – how about this: The calorie theory “To lose 1lb of fat, you need to create a deficit of 3500 calories” is always noted as “an approximation”. The closest I can get to this is 3,555. Close enough you might think – however this would add up to 170lbs difference in 30 years, according to this mad formula! (And the difference is ‘in our favour’, so we should be, on average, c. 12 stone lighter than we were in 1979)! The body simply does not follow a mathematical formula in this way – if it did – every person on c. 20 weight watchers points would lose 7½ stone each year, every year!

40 years of diets and we're fatter than ever!

2009-07-28T17:34:00.005+01:00

Daily Mail. July 23, 2009, by Sally Ann Voak.

Sally Ann Voak is the author of 28 diet books and this is, therefore, billed as a 'startling confession'. It is quite cynical, from someone who has made 'slimming' her profession since 1971. It concludes: "The problem is that the diet industry doesn't really want women to be slim, because if we were all a healthy size 10, who would ever buy a diet book or product?"

I don't entirely buy this. I think that the 99% of diets that are based on the myth "To lose 1lb of fat you need to create a deficit of 3500 calories" are probably, in the main, well intentioned. The crime, for me, is the fact that slimming clubs up and down the country observe women (especially) creating this deficit, week in week out, and not losing a single pound and yet they don't stop to question the fundamental formula and question its entire validity. That is the unforgivable bit in my view. I do believe that these clubs would be happy for people to lose weight and keep it off, but they also do well financially when most people don't lose any weight and those that do mostly put it all back on (and often more).

I personally want to help anyone I can in the world to be and stay slim. Interestingly, when I was anorexic, I wanted to feed up everyone around me (typical anorexic behaviour) because them being fatter would make me appear slimmer. Now, my goal is to help get as many people as I can to a normal BMI (with all the heart, cancer, diabetes, health, well-being etc benefits that this would deliver).

There are 1 billion overweight people in the world already and the number is rising! That's more than enough 'customers' to go round. Sadly, I truly believe that any diet that makes a person eat less is destined to make them fatter in the long run. Hence we are just producing more 'customers' every time someone sends their body into a pseudo-starvation situation and trains the body to store fat. The definition of madness is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result. We must stop trying to eat less to lose weight! It doesn't work!

School's out and we're off to FAT CAMP

2009-07-28T17:13:00.004+01:00

Daily Mail. July 18, 2009.

I wanted to cry at the end of this article. It is all about obese teenagers who are spending this summer at fat camps in the UK (such camps have been around in the US for years). The reason I wanted to cry is because the advice that they are being given in the camp is the advice that I believe is the CAUSE of the obesity epidemic!

The camp puts these growing teenagers on 1200 calories a day (almost certainly at least 800 calories below their need) AND they have to do at least 10,000 steps a day and all the pictures in the article were of the teenagers looking exhausted and fed up in the gym. This typical low calorie/low fat diet is by definition high carb (food is either carb/protein or fat/protein - so a low fat diet always has a higher proportion of carbs) and it is carbs that are responsible for overweight and obesity and not calories. Calories are just fuel for the body! When are we going to have the 180' transformation in thinking that we need to even halt the rise in obesity - let alone to reverse it?!

Kate and Grace, two of the guinea pigs, admit "we love carbs" - so - what does fat camp do? cut fat out of the diet and let them eat carbs to the limit of their calorie allowance! This will only serve to feed their cravings for carbs and ensure that they want carbs all day long. This is virtually guaranteed to turn them into food addicts before they cease to be teenagers.

Parents are paying £3,500 for a 4 week stay for each child (Kate and Grace are twins, so pity their parents!). They would be better off paying for the children to train in nutrition over the summer and to understand the impact of carbs on insulin and body weight. Grace and Kate lost 2lb and 3lb respectively at their first weigh in. They could have lost 3-4 times that on The Harcombe Diet without reducing their calorie intake and thereby possibly stunting their teenage growth forever. Tragic.

Where one child in six is obese before they start school

2009-07-28T16:54:00.003+01:00

Daily Mail. July 6, 2009.

This was a shocking article, by David Derbyshire, about childhood obesity. Overall, 1 child in 10 is obese by the age of 5, while 1 in 5 is obese when they start secondary school. The regional differences are even more striking: In Stockton-on-Tees, Durham, 1 in 6 is obese when they start school. In Adur, West Suzzex, it is 'only' 1 in 25.

The evidence that an overweight child becomes an overweight adult is overwhelming. The added pressures for children who are overweight, or obese, are also important to take into consideration. Children are regularly teased, even bullied, about their weight and parents who don't see 'puppy fat' for what it really is are not doing their children any favours.

The best way to get children back to a normal weight (better still - to not let them get overweight in the first place) is to only have real food in the house. No biscuits, cakes, sweets, crisps etc - just don't have them in the house. No one else in the house needs these things either. Have plenty of meat, fish, eggs, dairy, fruit, veg and salad at meals (all mixed up in things like 'spag-bol' - whatever it takes) and try to fill them up on real food.

If your children are pre-solid food age now, don't even start them on sugary foods or cereals. Watch out for the baby food also - some food manufacturers are quite simply irresponsible - The Children's Food campaign recently exposed that Farley's Rusks contained more sugar per gram than McVities Chocolate Digestives. What better way than to give humans an unnaturally sweet tooth than when they are babies! This is a disgusting way to treat the health of our next generation.

It is difficult to get children off sweet and processed food, so try to avoid starting in the first place.

Being a veggie makes you porky

2009-07-24T15:06:00.003+01:00

Daily Mail. June 29, 2009. Lowri Turner.

Boy did this article attract some comments on the Daily Mail blog! Lowri Turner has spent the past two years qualifying as a nutritionist and looks really good on it. She was one of the 'victims' of celebrity fit club and did the usual 'eat less/do more' only to put it all back on again. At 5 foot tall, she's 2 inches shorter than me and was 3 stone heavier (11 stone) at her peak! Whatever she is now, she's looking good on it.

The article was all about why being veggie is not good if you want to lose weight and Lowri's main arguments were:
1) there's lots of fat in veggie food e.g. 28g in a Linda McCartney meal vs 8g in a McDonalds;
2) the macronutrient balance - the veggie diet is skewed away from protien towards carbs (veggies eat beans and pasta etc).

Whilst I'm not sure the logic was perfect (the Linda McCartney meal appeared to be twice the size of the McDonalds, so we may not have been comparing like with like) and protein is in everything, so the macronutrients we want to be aware of are fat/proteins (which have no impact on insulin) and carb/proteins (which do have an impact on insulin).

Notwithstanding this, as a vegetarian and a nutritionist I have to agree with Lowri! Most of the Daily Mail site message board comments seemed to be more about defending vegetarianism than addressing the obesity issue.

There were the usual misconceptions - people writing that obesity is just about energy in and energy out. However if it were this simple, we wouldn't have a problem, let alone an epidemic - thermodynamics has been wrongly applied to humans and there is no law of thermodynamics that is as simple as energy in = energy out (re-read the 1st law if you doubt this and then the circumstances in which the 1st law applies and then you have to read the 2nd law).

There are 2 separate issues - supplying food to a growing world population would undoubtedly be helped by everyone being vegetarian. There can be no question about this. However, I share Lowri's view that the obesity epidemic would be helped by people eating meat and fish. Weight has far more to do with carbs consumed (and the concomitant insulin effect) than fat/protein.

My overweight, vegetarian clients only have dairy products and eggs as options that have no impact on insulin - far fewer meal options than carnivores. Also - the three conditions that cause food cravings are best overcome with a diet of 'meat, fish, eggs, salad/veg and Natural Live Yoghurt.' It is always more difficult for vegetarians to overcome these conditions than carnivores.

WeightWatcher Adverts

2009-07-24T14:57:00.004+01:00

All over the press summer 2009.

Have you seen the WeightWatchers adverts all over the press at the moment? The tag line is "I've discovered all my cravings were in my head, not my tummy."

Followers of The Harcombe Diet will realise that I could not disagree with this more. Two thirds of the UK population (and US) are overweight. I do not believe that two thirds of the population, of these nations, have a psychological problem with food.

I do believe, however, that there are three very common medical conditions, which cause insatiable food cravings: Candida, Food Intolerance and Hypoglycaemia. I also believe that counting calories is one of the most direct routes to getting one, or all, of these three conditions. My expectation, therefore, would be that a WeightWatchers regular is highly likely to develop physical cravings for sugar, wheat and all the things that they try to eat ' in moderation' on calorie restricted diets. Start Counting Calories and end up a food addict. Stop Counting Calories & Start Losing Weight!

NOTW Problem Page: How to put on weight

2009-07-24T14:43:00.005+01:00

News of the World. July 19, 2009.

I noticed this little gem, flicking through the News of the World last weekend. On the problem page, a guy had written in to say "I'm sick of obese people getting all the sympathy - what about the underweight". He explained "I'm a 19 year old man and although I'm nearly 6ft tall, I weigh under 10 stone." He was asking for help to put ON weight and he got some very good advice from Agony Aunt, Jane Butterworth.

Jane advised him to eat bigger portions of nutritious foods - especially carbohydrates! I totally agree with Jane - no one should be encouraged to eat processed foods - ever. So advising someone to still focus on nutritious foods is good advice. And the advice to eat more carbs, to put on weight, is also good advice. Strange though, isn't it, that the standard weight loss advice is to eat more carbs! The Eatwell Plate can comprise anywhere up to 85% carbohydrate and recommends a minimum of 66% carb as a proportion of the diet.

If someone seeks my help in losing weight, the last thing I would do is to encourage them to base their meals on carbs! Not least because the advice also doesn't recommend nutritious carbs, as Jane does. I have met so many dieticians who don't consider sugar to be a bad food "There's no such thing as a bad food, only bad diets," I regularly hear. And so the UK average person continues to consume 400 empty calories of sugar per day.

Ditch the processed food and curb the carbs if you want to lose weight. If you want to gain weight - Jane is bang on!

Letting fat children eat junk food is child abuse

2009-07-24T14:23:00.004+01:00

Daily Mail. July 11, 2009. Amanda Platell's Column.

This is a brilliant lead column by Amanda Platell in response to the Jamie Oliver initiative on school meals (see the blog "Jamie's school meal revolution shunned by 400,000 pupils"). In great Amanda style - say it how it is - Amanda argues that Jamie's plan required the support of all parents and they have let him down. Amanda noted "Far from helping him bring about his dietary revolution, many mothers sought to undermine him by continuing to feed their children junk food at home or - worse still - smuggling takeaways into the playground."

Amanda ends the article by saying "It's not just ignorance to reject Jamie's healthy eating plan. It's child abuse."

I have to agree with Amanda. There is overwhelming evidence that an overweight child will become an overweight adult and being overweight, let alone obese, will substantially increase the risk of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and the major fatal illnesses. (Much research continues to be done on the link between diet and weight and cancer). With the exception of a few monsters, I believe that all parents love their children and yet how can passing bags of chips under the school gate, rather than encouraging the child to have Jamie's nutritionally rich meals, be 'loving one's child'?

Please parents - give your children the best possible start in life with the most important fundamental of all - what they eat.

We'll pay you to lose weight

2009-07-18T14:57:00.003+01:00

Daily Mail. November 11, 2008: "We'll pay the obese to take a walk."
News of the World. April 12, 2009: "Lards of Money: NHS paying fatties £425 to lose weight."
Daily Mail. July 3, 2009: "Lose weight and we'll give you £1 for every pound."

(Don't you just love the NOTW headline!)
This story just doesn't go away. I first saw it around November 2008. The news then was that Manchester would begin the scheme and then, if successful, it would be rolled out. The idea was that people would accumulate points for things like: losing weight; walking children to school; joining exercise classes and/or slimming clubs etc. Points could then be traded in through supermarkets for healthy food.

The initial proposal received much negative reaction - Tam Fry of The National Obesity Forum called it "too little, too late". Other politicians attacked the idea as 'gimmicky' and 'open to abuse'.

The April 2009 NOTW article, didn't mention Manchester, but said that scheme would be set up under the name "Weight Wins" and that it would be run by the NHS. The maximum payout would be £425 for someone who loses 50lbs. Apparently even 40 "chubby" (as the NOTW calls them) nurses had signed up to the scheme.

The July 2009 Daily Mail article said that "Men and women are to be paid to lose weight in the first scheme of its kind in the UK". They will be given a £1 shopping voucher for every pound they shed, in the pilot scheme involving 100 volunteers. The pilot is due to start in September 2009 in Essex and Basildon. A Basildon council spokesman said "we have initially set aside £1,000 for the scheme. We don't want to encourage people to excessive weight loss." (This is probably a fair sum given the success people usually have following government weight loss advice!)

I'm confused! So what happened after November 2008 and April 2009? Nothing?! Is this the pilot scheme or the third scheme? Will we hear about results, or just initiatives?!

And all of this misses the complete point that people who want to be slim don't lack motivation. In a study of formerly fat people, who had lost weight after intestinal bypass surgery, researchers at the University of Florida reported that virtually all said they would rather be blind or deaf or have a leg amputated than be fat again. That is how much people want to be slim and yet two thirds of people in the UK are overweight (Body Mass Index, BMI, of 25+) and one quarter are obese (BMI of 30+).

So people don't lack motviation - they lack advice that will actually work. The current eat less/do more, base your meals on starchy foods, graze, eat everything in moderation - all this advice is what needs to be changed - not financial incentives offered to already desperate people.

70,000 lives a year 'could be saved by a healthier diet'

2009-07-18T11:53:00.004+01:00

Daily Mail. January 4, 2008

This was a report by Daniel Martin (political reporter) following a cabinet office study called "Food: An analysis of the issues". The report concluded "there can be few areas of public policy where the positive benefits to lives, health and wellbeing are potentially as dramatic as they could be in diet and nutrition." "The potential benefits of changes to diets are huge, as are the issues to be tackled in effecting and sustaining long-term change." "The current costs of diet related ill health are probably in excess of £10 billion a year and growing."

The article had a summary table on deaths, which the report estimated could be avoided with better diet. I have no idea how the cabinet study came to these numbers, but, if accurate, they do make sobering reading:

- 42,000 premature deaths could be avoided if people ate 5 portions of fruit & veg a day;
- 20,000 lives could be saved if salt intake were reduced to the recommended maximum of 6g per day;
- 3,500 lives could be saved by cutting saturated fat intake by 2.3%;
- 3,500 lives could be saved by cutting sugar intake by 1.8%.

Other sobering stats were:
- There has been a 300% rise in the consumption of ready meals over the past decade;
- 2 billion takeaway meals are bought every year;
- £10 billion is the estimated annual cost to the NHS and public services of poor diet;
- £20 billion would be a further saving if people ate more healthy (not sure how?).

I'm quite sceptical of some of the stats above (on the first set of bullets especially) - I'm not sure how they were reached and, logically, I would expect more benefit from stopping eating bad things than adding in good things. Tkae sugar, for example, could we save 7,000 lives if we cut intake by 3.6%? Does the benefit continue in a straight line? We eat 400 empty calories of sugar, per average person in the UK. Surely we can reduce by far more than 1.8% and what would the benefit be?

Even if UK PLC read this article and thought about eating better, this can only be a good thing.

Jamie's school meal revolution shunned by 400,000 pupils

2009-07-17T16:36:00.002+01:00

Daily Mail. July 10, 2009

When you look at this, alongside the blog about obese mothers and fathers being 10 and 6 times more likely, respectively, to have obese daughters and sons, this article makes you want to scream!

Ministers set aside £500m to help with this project - quite rightly - as the evidence that an obese child will become an obese adult is overwhelming. Jamie has done some quite brilliant and brave, pioneering, work to champion the cause for the health of our children and he has been let down by the parents of 400,000 children.

Jamie has not failed, these parents have failed their children and it defies logic as to why they would do this. I am sure people who read this blog and follow The Harcombe Diet principles of real food, are equally shocked. I have friends, who emailed me after a recent newsletter sharing news from The Children's Food Campaign, and they said they were really encouraged that they were doing the right thing. They sometimes wondered if they were depriving their toddlers, but they were appalled to see the sugar and transfat content in infant food exposed by the equally brilliant Children's Food Campaigners.

Parents who try to avoid giving their children processed foods are not depriving them - you are doing them one of the biggest health favours you possible can. Especially while the baby/infant/toddler's taste buds are forming, the last thing you want to give them is a taste for sugar and artificial sweetness.

Did you know that the ingredients in “Kids and Grown-ups love it so, the happy world of Haribo” are (in order) glucose syrup, sugar, gelatine, dextrose, citric acid, flavourings, fruit & plant concentrates, colours (including carmine, which is made from crushed insects), glazing agents (including beeswax), invert sugar syrup and fruit extract. I bought a bag to photograph for my "least favourite" food page on my web site and then threw the bag away. I don't dislike any human, let alone any child, on this planet enough to give them such rubbish. This is not 'treating' your child, it is about as irresponsible as an adult can be.

A Weight off my mind

2009-07-17T16:03:00.006+01:00

Daily Mail. July 2, 2009

This was an article written by Claudia Connell and, to be fair, she did have the sub heading "It's the weirdest weight-loss idea ever - a hypnotist makes you think you've had gastric band surgery and will never need to eat so much again."

My hubby took one look at the article and said "But she's writing the article, so she knows she hasn't actually had a gastric band fitted - am I missing something?" (So funny)

I like Claudia - she writes some cracking articles in the Daily Mail - and for her health and well-being I really hope that she finds something that works for her. I will be really interested to see if this is the thing that does (joking from my man apart). Anything that helps an overweight person lose weight and keep it off is to be embraced. I am not trying to convert the world to The Harcombe Diet - if anyone out there has something that works for them (Atkins, whatever) - stick with it! Rare is the person that can lose weight and keep it off.

However, I am nervous for Claudia that this is taking her down the 'eat less' route. Indeed, she says in the article "I burn 1600 calories a day. A non dieting woman will averagely consume 2,000 calories a day which means I have 400 extra calories that are not being burnt and are turning into fat. If I cut my calorie intake to 1,300 a day, I can lose a pound a week - if I exercise as well I can double that."

The maths is all over the place (aside from the fact that, as other blogs will show, the calorie theory maths doesn't hold anyway):
1) If Claudia only 'burns' (the body does not behave like a Bunsen burner for a start) 1,600 cals a day and then eats 1,300 a day, she will only create a deficit of 7*300 cals in a week, which is 0.6 of a pound a week (according even to the theory);

2) Exercise will not automatically double this - it will depend on how much exercise and whether Claudia eats more after the exercise because exercise makes you hungry!

3) The type of calories eaten are (in my view) far more important than the number eaten, when it comes to weight loss. As Kekwick and Pawan proved in 1956 - Claudia could eat 2,000 cals of carbs and put on weight and 2,600 cals of virtually no carbs and lose weight.

This is just one reason why we have to Stop Counting Calories to Start Losing Weight!

Obese Mothers 'at ten times the risk of having obese daughters'

2009-07-17T15:28:00.005+01:00

TV, Radio & Newspapers. July 14, 2009

This story was widely reported everywhere on Tuesday - I woke up to see the story on BBC Breakfast news. The study was conducted in Plymouth and the findings were published in the International Journal of obesity. 226 families were studied, which some other researchers have cautioned is a small number. The key conclusions were:

1) Obese mothers are ten times more likely to have obese daughters than those of a healthy weight.
2) Obese fathers are six times more likely to have obese sons than those of a healthy weight.

The really interesting things about this study are:
1) The impact within same gender relationships, which didn't seem to occur across genders. So, boys mirrored their fathers and girls mirrored their mothers.

2) The quite dramatic difference between the normal weight and obese parents and children. Just 3% of boys with normal weight fathers were obese vs 18% of boys with obese fathers. Just 4% of girls with normal weight mothers were obese vs 41% of girls with obese mothers. These are big differences!

3) This, of course, opens up the nature/nurture debate. This is often debated at obesity conferences - is obesity in the genes? Is it picked up from parents' behaviour? As with the nature/nurture debate, the answer is not 100:0 either way. Both genetics and behaviour play a part, but this does seem to suggest that nurture is playing a huge part. Girls will understandably look at what mum eats and pick up good, or bad, habits and boys will look to dad in a similar way.

The key message for parents from this? You have an additional responsibility to your child (particularly to your same gender child) for their health and weight, as well as for your own. Don't get them into bad low calorie/low fat/high carb/high processed food habits early on. Get their taste buds used to eating real food - meat, fish, eggs, dairy products, fruit, veg/salad, whole grains etc. If you do this from the earliest age possible they will not acquire the taste for junk in the first place and you will have far less difficulty getting them to eat good food. It's the toughest job in the world being a parent - but you need to rise to all the challenges.

The Junk Food Divide

2009-07-16T15:45:00.003+01:00

Daily Mail. July 10, 2009

This is a really interesting article on the North-South divide, when it comes to shopping baskets.

mysupermarket.co.uk have surveyed 250,000 grocery orders to see what is going in the shopping baskets in different parts of the UK. They found the following:
- Shoppers in the North East spend 22% less on fruit & veg than those in London and the South East;
- Shoppers in the North East spend 23% more on crisps & snacks than those in London and the South East.
Interesting that a study published in the same week estimated men living in the SE had a 71% chance of living to age 75, vs a 63% chance for men in the NE living to the same age.

There was the usual helpful Daily Mail graph of the UK in the article - showing the annual spend on fruit and veg by region:
- Scotland and the NE were lowest at £400-£419 p.a.
- Wales and the NW were next worst at £420-£439 p.a.
- Yorkshire and the Midlands were at £440-£459 p.a.
- The SW spend was at £460-£479 p.a.
- East Anglia and the South of England were second with an annual average spend of £480-£499 on fruit & veg and
- London & the SE was top with £500 plus.

Stop Counting Calories & Start Losing Weight!
Zoe Harcombe, Author, Nutritionist & Obesity Researcher

Tania Bryer - What I ate this week

2009-07-16T15:33:00.002+01:00

Daily Mail "Femail" regular feature. July 9, 2009

Just like Nancy below, Tanya has also proved the calorie theory to be wrong. Tanya's total adds up to a higher 12,404 (what were the 4 cals I wonder?!)

Assuming that Tanya also needs 14,000 calories per week, she has a deficit of 1,596 calories each week, so she should be losing (1,596*52/3500) = 23.71lbs per year. That's nearly two stone - each and every year. Have you seen Tanya? She's have to cut her legs off to lose two stone!

Hannah Sandling is featured on July 16, 2009 and her intake is 12,082. Such a small difference to Tanya, you would think, but that's 5lbs more each year she should be losing.

Again - I suspect both women are at a stable weight and find that they can't eat more than this without putting on weight - a sad consequence of calorie restricted diets.

Stop Counting Calories & Start Losing Weight!
Zoe Harcombe, Author, Nutritionist & Obesity Researcher

Nancy Sorrell - What I ate this week

2009-07-16T14:53:00.003+01:00

Daily Mail "Femail" regular feature. June 25, 2009

I love these celeb interviews on what they eat during a typical week mainly because they enable us to blow apart the calorie theory. (This is the statement: To lose 1lb of fat you need to create a deficit of 3,500 calories). Working on the basis that an average woman needs 2,000 calories a day (a busy celeb probably needs more), we can see what should be happening to the person's weight over time.

This diet diary was Nancy Sorrell's and her calorie intake for the week came to 9,784. (How can any calorie count be so precise?!) Assuming that Nancy needs 14,000 calories per week, according to the ridiculous calorie theory, Nancy has a deficit of 4,216 calories each week. Assuming that this is a typical week, Nancy should be losing (4,216*52/3500) = 62.64lbs per year. That's four and a half stone - each and every year, if she keeps this up. Yes - that means she'll weigh nothing within 2 years - that's why I call it the ridiculous theory.

The tragedy is that it is the basis of all current diet advice. Everything stems from this and the simple slogan "Eat less/do more" derives directly from it. Frightening that obesity has gone up most dramatically over the past 30 years - the time during which we have been pushing this theory most vociferously.

My money is on Nancy staying a very similar weight and having to maintain this calorie restriction (because the body will have gotten used to the lower fuel intake) and yet another poor woman starving to prove the calorie theory doesn't work.

Stop Counting Calories & Start Losing Weight!
Zoe Harcombe, Author, Nutritionist & Obesity Researcher

TV Diet shows made us fatter

2008-02-08T18:28:00.000Z

Daily Mail Double page spread April 11, 2007

Key words: Daily Mail, Frances Hubbard, Anna Seaman, Diets, Nicola Duffett, Shelly Stevenson, Lorna Slater, Celebrity Fit Club, Fit Farm, Gillian McKeith, “You are what you eat”

The theme of the article: This article was a double page spread, with photos, of three women who had very publicly lost weight on TV diet shows and then put it all back on – and more. Nicola Duffett, an Eastenders actress, had been on “Celebrity Fit Club”, where she went from just over 12 stone to 11 stone. At the time of the article she weighed 13 st 7lb! Shelly Stevenson appeared on Channel 4’s “Fit Farm”. She lost 10 lbs, from her starting weight of 12 stone 1lb, but was also 13st 7lb at the time of appearing in the article. Lorna Slater appeared on Gillian McKeith’s “You are what you eat” and lost 21 lbs from her starting weight of 13 st 7lb. She has now returned to her original weight.

Zoe Harcombe comment: What these three guinea pigs have found is that dieting actually makes you fat. There are 3 things that happen directly when you try to lose weight and 3 things that happen indirectly and all of them make your body want more food and need less food. These things combined mean that it is extremely difficult to lose weight by eating less and you are virtually guaranteed to put the weight back on if you do lose any.

When we eat less, our body stores fat, uses up lean muscle and slows our metabolisms. This simultaneously reduces the body’s need for fuel, so that we get to the point where we put on weight consuming the amount of fuel that used to maintain our weight. Another dimension is that our body tries to get us to eat, to reverse the fuel deficit, and we also develop the three medical conditions that cause insatiable food cravings. There are many things acting together to get us to eat more and to slow our metabolisms, so we increase our desire for calories/fuel and reduce our need for calories/fuel. This is why we put weight back on.

My two books, “Why do you overeat? When all you want is to be slim” and “Stop Counting calories & Start Losing Weight” explain exactly what happens when you try to eat less and do more (i.e. follow a traditional diet) and how your body acts in the exact opposite way to how you want it to behave. It increases you DESIRE for food and reduces your NEED for food at the same time – a fatal combination for people trying to lose weight. Read either of these books if you want to see why “Diet shows will make you fatter” and what you must do instead if you want to lose weight and keep it off.

Zoe Harcombe - Author

Blame the Junk food – Bad diet, not lack of exercise, is behind child obesity crisis

2008-02-01T17:07:00.000Z

Daily Mail March 14, 2007

A verbatim extract from the article: “Poor nutrition is the cause of obesity in children, not lack of physical exercise, a scientist claimed yesterday. Professor Terrence Wilkin said the crisis was being caused by larger portion sizes of unhealthy foods. His research undermines the government’s strategy to cut child obesity by focusing on more sports facilities in schools. He said there was no evidence at all that physical education lessons have any impact on a child’s weight.”

Zoe Harcombe comment: The debate on exercise is fascinating. Some people say, “…if only people did more, they would not be overweight…” The government in the UK seems to think that we shouldn’t be too worried about what our children eat – so long as they are doing lots of exercise, and not playing on computer games, all will be fine.

One of the most brilliant TV programmes I ever watched blew this theory sky high. The programme was called “30 Minutes” and it was all about childhood obesity. During the programme there was an experiment where the presenter, Nick Cohen, took a boys’ football team from London, England, and split them into three groups. One third of the team were given an apple; another third a bag of crisps and the final group a confectionery bar. The teenagers were then asked to run around an athletics track continuously until they had burned off what they had eaten. The apple group needed to run for 13 minutes to burn off the apple. The crisp group needed to run for 42 minutes to burn off the crisps and the confectionery group needed to run for 1 hr and 5 minutes to burn off their item. The presenter explained that, if a child ate a bag of crisps, a confectionery bar, a burger & chips and had a fizzy drink, they would need to run for 5 hours to burn that off!

In short, exercise alone is not going to solve your weight problem. As the “30 Minutes” programme showed, the amount of exercise that you need to do to burn off food is astonishing. Furthermore, exercise actually increases your need for energy/fuel. When you exercise, you need more energy (calories), so you need to be careful that you don’t finish doing exercise and find yourself so hungry that you want to eat more than you have just used up.

Please don’t think that exercise is a bad thing to do. It is in fact a great thing to do, but it won’t solve your weight problem. Exercise tones your body and it makes you feel more energetic and healthier. It has been shown to lift mood, reduce stress and make people feel happier and more positive. Exercise can develop the three main aspects of fitness – strength, stamina and suppleness – all great for your health. You can have fun and meet people doing sport, or joining a gym. There are many good reasons to exercise, but trying to rely on exercise to lose weight is not one of them.

Diets Damage Your Health

2008-01-24T19:57:00.000Z

Daily Mail Headline Story April 10, 2007

A verbatim extract from the article: “The world’s largest study of weight loss has shown that diets do not work for the vast majority of slimmers and may even put lives at risk. More than two thirds pile the pounds straight back on, raising the danger of heart attack, stroke and diabetes. Indeed most dieters end up heavier than they did to start with, the researcher found.”

Zoe Harcombe comment: How much more evidence do we need before we realise that the current dieting advice (Eat less and do more) is actually the CAUSE of the obesity epidemic? It will never be the cure. The empirical evidence is irrefutable – we have been telling people to eat less and do more increasingly vociferously since the 1980’s and obesity has tripled during this time in the UK.

One quarter of the UK population is now obese (BMI >30) and two thirds is overweight (BMI >25). Levels of obesity have tripled since 1980. If current trends continue, by 2050 60% of men, 50% of women and 25% of children will be obese.

Here are some direct quotes from the Food Standards Agency’s web site:

... since the late 1980s we have been consuming less total fat and we’ve also cut down on saturated fat

Since the 60s we’ve been consuming fewer calories from household food… However, there are an increasing number of people who are overweight or obese. The reasons for this are not clear

Following significant changes over the past few years, the British diet is probably as healthy as it’s ever been

Levels of obesityhave tripled since 1980 in England, and there is no sign of the upward trend stopping

The UK has the fastest rising obesity rates in the developed world

So, let me understand this, the UK has been following the diet advice – we are eating less fat, we are eating fewer calories, our diet is probably the best it has ever been, but levels of obesity have tripled since 1980 and we have the fastest rising obesity rate in the world. If this were a scientific experiment, we would stop it immediately and conclude that it isn’t working. What happens instead is that the “Eat less and do more” advice is shouted even louder and stronger by governments, doctors, dieticians and the media...

My two books, “Why do you overeat? When all you want is to be slim” and “Stop Counting calories & Start Losing Weight” explain exactly what happens when you try to eat less and do more (i.e. follow a traditional diet) and how your body acts in the exact opposite way to how you want it to behave. It increases you DESIRE for food and reduces your NEED for food at the same time – a fatal combination for people trying to lose weight. Read either of these books if you want to see why “Diets do indeed damage your health” and what you must do instead if you want to lose weight and keep it off.