Big fat scare

We're said to be in the midst of an obesity epidemic so unstoppable we're all going to get horrible fat-related diseases and die prematurely.

Except that an American health expert says it's all a pack of lies, actually there's no epidemic and we can all relax and give up the frantic dieting.

Professor Patrick Basham of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore says there's no evidence that overweight and obesity are significantly increasing. He says that in 1997 the definition of overweight was changed and millions more people were suddenly classed as overweight - although their weight hadn't altered.

In fact the average adult weighs only a pound or two more than a generation ago, and some surveys suggest child obesity is actually declining.

Nor is it true, he says, that being overweight or modestly obese leads to premature death. The increased risk is tiny, as is the number of early deaths.

He claims statistics have been distorted and misread to imply that body-weight has become a widespread problem.

In particular, there's a false assumption that overweight children become overweight adults and overweight adults become obese. But this is not necessarily so.

Furthermore, he says the new obsession with dieting and weight monitoring to control this so-called problem itself leads to serious health risks, eating disorders and body-image hang-ups.

Instead of a campaign against obesity, what we really need is a campaign against thinness and pointless dieting.

His opinions are an astonishing contradiction of the conventional wisdom that assails us from all sides. Can he be right? I hope so. Then we can all calm down and leave our bodies alone.

Size two-zero, anyone?

PS (November 8): Medical researchers in the USA have concluded that a bit of fat actually does you good. Slight overweight in fact makes you 40% less likely then normal weight people to die of a whole range of diseases and risks including cancer, heart disease, emphysema, pneumonia and Alzheimers. In 2004 in the USA there were 100,000 fewer deaths among the overweight than if they had been of normal weight. The researchers were from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia.

Size zero

I can understand people wanting to be thinner, but why this sudden obsession with being ultra-thin, as though a single ounce of unnecessary flesh is some kind of social stigma?

The people of Northern Ireland are mostly too hard-headed and down to earth to fall for such masochistic fads, and there is a reassuring absence of artificially whittled-down females (or males for that matter). They would rather tuck into a few jam-laden scones or a generous helping of champ than starve themselves into a miniscule dress.

But there are still enough women trapped in compulsive dieting to bring calls for a specialist eating disorders unit, which at the moment doesn't exist here. Right now you can only get help from your GP, and it's pot luck whether they're sympathetic or baffled.

I'm fairly thin myself, but I've never felt the urge to be even thinner, or imagined that my perfectly acceptable size is disgustingly flabby. But then I'm not deluged with images of stick-thin males everywhere I look, whereas skinny, streamlined females flood the media.

Or at least that's the case elsewhere but here they're refreshingly scarce. Female celebrities* come in all shapes and sizes and the idea of their slimming down to some tape measure ideal is given short shrift. Politics apart, we're much more willing to accept people as they are, warts and all. Striving too hard to change your appearance is seen as pretentious and false. Which is why there's also a limited market for plastic surgery here. If a well-known TV presenter (say, the delightful Donna Traynor) was suddenly to shed a couple of stone people wouldn't be green with envy, they'd just think she was putting on airs.

Or perhaps women in Northern Ireland just believe the old maxim that most men find larger, more curvaceous women sexier, and have noted that the unnaturally petite showbiz divas don't have very satisfying love lives.

*Actually we tend not to use the word celebrity - we don't believe in putting people on pedestals.