TAKE BACK YOUR BIRTHRIGHT OF NUTRITIONAL EASE

24 October 2006: There's a widespread and insidious fraud going on. The victims are everyone who is anxious about diet and weight - and the stealth crime is "Meal Stealing".

Before anyone has really noticed, there will soon not be a single food morsel remaining which has not been manipulated and/or overpriced by the Diet & Food Industries.

Extra pressure is piling up on the millions of people already suffering confusion and panic regarding what they should do next about their growing eating and image worries.

The shifts in emphasis on the road to food domination have been subtle. Diet foods until recently stood alone - pricey and unconvincing milkshakes, by and large, out on the peripheries amongst medical supplies within the supermarkets.

But then came the lo-fat, then lo-calorie and now lo-carb products which are displacing traditional offerings. And far beyond the early diet products and also beyond this more recent food groups manipulation, comes blatant main meal displacement by junk.

It as if we have progressed through 3rd Degree to 1st Degree Meal Stealing, all within a short generation. Main meal displacement is the overpromotion of trash foods into potential meals by themselves. We are now seeing more and more attempts not just to squeeze marginal foods on to the menu but also to force themselves further in as major dietary staples.

Three recent examples illustrate the trend. The first concerns breakfast cereals, the advertising of which has traditionally been about the choice of start-up fuel early in the morning. Recently, however, there have been many advertisements presenting bottom end cereal as an all-day food option.

Another case is the attempted re-branding of trashy, overly additive-coated noodles from being just a snack into the status of a traditional food staple.

A third area is that of convenience shopping. There is currently a commercial running showing the multi-role juggling of a modern homemaker. Her late evening eating comprises ice cream, to be bought on special offer from her local convenience store.

While the tactics are getting more brazen, it pays to step back and to consider the overall picture.

It boils down to the inescapable fact that all diet foods are worse than useless in achieving the necessary attitudinal balance towards eating. This includes the giant Reduced Fat & Reduced Calories (RFRC) category. The UK market size of the RFRC category, plus "specific" diet foods is approaching £2.2 billion per year. In the US the size of the specific diet food sector alone is said to be $15 billion.

A sign of how far the Diet & Food Industries have moved beyond a balance between profit and realistic supply is provided in the growth of the Intuitive Eating movement. This attempts to reconnect people with a sense of nutritional homeostasis, driven by natural eating hunger and eating rhythms.

It is astonishing that it has come to this.........that we have allowed ourselves to be robbed of a function in feeding ourselves that has until recently always been as simple and natural as the function of breathing air.

It is time to take your own personal stand against the Meal Stealers and to take back your birthright of nutritional ease. Have nothing to do with anything "lo", "reduced", or "diet". Realise that it is the total that matters when it comes to eating, not an artificial sum of artificial parts.

And this "total" has so very little in reality to do with a conscious obsession with what we actually put in our mouths but absolutely everything to do with the good things that we can put into our minds instead.

Think on it well.