UK Minister Warns Magazine Editors on Fad Diets

UK Minister of Business, Jo Swinson, has advised women’s magazine editors in the UK to stop featuring irresponsible fad diets that set unrealistic goals about weight loss and may be harmful to women’s health in this New Year resolution season. Ms Swinson, in a radio interview, said any diet that is “encouraging you to lose weight at a miracle speed or cutting out food groups, or skipping meals, any kind of these fad diets, actually can have negative health consequences,” and cited diets such as “Lose Seven Pounds in Seven Days.”

In addition, Swinson encouraged editors to focus instead on encouraging positive body image and, if they must talk about dieting, to emphasize diets with realistic goals. According to Swinson, “Resolutions about making small changes to your lifestyle that are sustainable and which can actually help you be more healthy through exercise as well are very welcome, but I think when you just look at the newsstands over the next few days, and some of the ones I’ve got in front of me today, things like ‘lose seven pounds in seven days’, that is not a healthy rate to lose weight.”

Click here to read the Telegraph article.

Times Square newsstand image © Tomas Fano / Wikimedia