Becoming vegetarian in the mid 1980s meant a heavy reliance on Sosmix and Knit Your Own Risottos from Holland & Barrett. I’ve liked the shop ever since and often pop
in there for vitamins and bags of dried fruit every now and then. I was in there this week and along with the vitamins, bought my first ever copy of their Healthy magazine (the UK’s Best-Selling Health Magazine, only £1.50!) Well, it was on the counter and an impulse purchase, but what a right load of twaddle it was. It didn’t bode well when I saw a two page article by the (now legally) fake Dr Gillian McKeith and a one page ad for the Dr Gillian McKeith’s Love Bar (an organic, healthy snack!) but it got worse, much worse.
Now, I know nothing about science but I know psycho-science-babble when I spot it. On the supposed benefits of eating walnuts (p.70) This humble nut is great for helping us stay true to ourselves and how about this If you’re getting peer pressure, two drops of walnut on your tongue can help you appreciate your individuality. How can walnut essence help you cope with peer pressure? How? “Coming down the pub tonight?” “No, I’m going to stay in and dab my tongue with essence of nut”. And the magazine got nuttier still. Writing about a yoga retreat she and her husband went on (p.144), the writer of an incredibly soft article said she’d gone partly to cope with the death of her cat (yes, really) and partly, oh, let’s have a guess, because she was offered the retreat as a freebie. I love yoga and have been doing it for years and subscribe to a healthy eating routine, but this magazine shocked me with its base level of complete and utter crap.
And just when I was about to throw it into the recycling bin with disgust, 
thinking it couldn’t get any worse, it did, with an ad for the The Diet Plate “let the plate control the calories!”. Argh! The only sane comment in the whole of the mag was from the lovely Lorraine Kelly who let the readers in on her big fat secret about staying slim: “There’s only one good way to lose weight… eat less rubbish and get off your bum!”. Eh? But I’ve already sent off for The Diet Plate.
3 comments:
I think Holland and Barrett confuse 'healthy' eating with 'wealthy' eating.
They get wealthy by telling us that the overpriced stuff they sell will make us healthy.
It's a well known fact that Lorraine Kelly is an absolute goddess.
Damn glad to see someone else getting their teeth into Gillian McKeith. She's the mouldy Ryvita bar of the diet world.
Your comments about Madame McKeith have inspired me to write about her myself...!
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