OPINION: Will society fast its way to health?

My friend David Adams has been promoting The Fast Diet for some time. David is also the person who has tuned me in to thinking about gaining lightness rather than losing weight. And armed with the fast diet he has gained some fantastic lightness by fasting two days out of seven over the past half year.

Now Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is promoting the same programme in the Guardian. What is interesting about his article is the context.

“All my books and TV shows are largely complicit with [society’s] disastrous approach to eating,” he writes.

“I like to think I am at the healthier, more natural end of the spectrum…but I think it would be unwise not to acknowledge that even the ‘River Cottage diet’ – rich as it ought to be in fresh vegetables and fruit – is open to abuse.

“The fact is that even those of us who know exactly what a sensible…healthy diet looks like still struggle to keep to one much of the time.

“The industrialisation of food is now universal…”

The fast diet could be a way out of the trap, he writes. But it takes one thing: self-discipline. So far Hugh is making good progress.

The idea of the Fast Diet is likely to spread. This will have an impact for local shops in the range of foods that they sell and in the behaviour of their shoppers. However, I recommend that you read The Food Rules, which I reviewed some time ago, before taking further action.