Eating disorder

"Almost no one has a normal relationship with food" - Lionel Shriver*

How very true that is. When I was young, people had breakfast, dinner and supper, and that was it. They might have had the odd biscuit or slice of cake in between whiles. Nowadays we all have different eating habits. Snacks, sandwiches, full meals, binges. Who knows what I'm eating or what you're eating? The old routines have vanished.

Likewise, when I was small, people mostly just ate what was put in front of them. They weren't especially faddy or particular. But now everyone has their personal likes and dislikes, not to mention allergies and medical problems, and providing meals that cater for all tastes is increasingly difficult.

Again, when I was a kid it was rare for people to eat in the street; it was considered vulgar and improper. Maybe a bag of chips or an ice cream. Anything else had to be eaten indoors. But today people eat absolutely anywhere, regardless of the mess, the smell or the sheer amount they're eating.

And now there are also the huge numbers of people who're anorexic, or bulimic, or grossly overweight, and whose eating habits are even more out of line.

Is it a good thing or a bad thing that the way we eat has become so individual and so unpredictable? Does it encourage unhealthy obsessions and fetishes that are screwing us up? Or does it mean people are free to follow their own bodily needs and not other people's?

Lionel Shriver faced the same dilemma as she watched her brother Greg get heavier and heavier but was powerless to stop him. By the time he died from respiratory failure at 55, he was about 400 pounds. Lionel herself is small and skinny and eats only one meal a day.

So when do we treat someone's eating habits as a personal matter we shouldn't comment on, and when do we say it's a health issue that needs urgent attention? It's a very tricky question.

*Lionel Shriver - American author of "Big Brother", "We Need To Talk About Kevin", "The Post Birthday World" and "So Much for That"

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.