I was having a look at the latest 'news' from the National Obesity Forum (NOF) when I noticed that Anne Diamond has been appointed their patron. I believe that Anne doesn't know what she's doing and I want to help her to open her eyes so I've written to her in the hope that she's as innocent as I think she is. Before I go on, I'll give a bit of a description of both the NOF and Anne so that you know what I'm talking about.
NOF
The NOF describes itself as 'an independent charity, working to improve the prevention and management of obesity'. But if you look through the pages of their website you'll see that they're not really an independent charity at all because they're sponsored by the branches of the diet industry, including Canderel, and drug companies that produce weight loss drugs, such as Abbot Laboratories who produced questionable diet drug Reductil.
Their website states their aims and objectives as:
To create recognition of obesity as a serious medical problem
To provide education and training on obesity management
To produce guidelines for obesity management within primary care
To provide a network for health professionals and an obesity management support and information resource
To convince Government and healthcare works to give obesity a high priority nationally and locally.
To raise the profile of obesity via medical and lay media channels
To highlight the health inequalities of obesity
To promote quality clinical care via an annual "Best Practice Awards"
In a nutshell their aims and objectives are all designed to keep the status quo and have overeaters trying to lose weight for the sake of their health using advice, products and services that have and always will have a 95 to 98 per cent failure rate. Advice, products and services that CAUSE the problem in the first place.
Nothing they report has any absolute scientific or medical back up. All of the information and advice that they make public and state as medical and scientific fact has a great deal of evidential material in the form of clinical trials and studies that show that their point of view is UNTRUE and based in propaganda, myth and misinformation.
They are, in my opinion, a marketing device for the slimming industry (the most successful failed business in the world) and not a charity devoted to helping the obese.
Anne Diamond
Anne is a TV presenter/UK celebrity and compulsive overeater who has had what she sees as weight problems for many years. After failing at dieting (surprise, surprise) she had bariatric surgery (which failed originally and which she admits has a great many unpleasant physical and psychological side effects). This surgery didn't, of course, help her with her compulsive overeating. She has allowed herself to be persuaded and used by the diet industry because her problems meant she was open and in receiver setting and in desperate need of a solution. She has absorbed 'knowledge' directed at her from questionable sources and is now a passionate diet industry/diet surgery industry/diet drugs industry spokeswoman. I believe she has accepted the position of patron of the National Obesity Forum thinking that it is a charity that helps people. I think she cares very much about helping people because she knows what they feel!
She is misinformed and innocent.
I would like to offer her the other side of the story.
I've written to her:
Dear Anne Diamond,
I'm hoping that you will take just a minute to read what I have to say. I have seen that you are the Patron for the National Obesity Forum. I can see from your appearances on TV and from what you say in the press that you fully believe that the message you passionately preach is the truth. I have been researching the subject intensively for a great many years and I can see that there are a lot of gaps in your knowledge of the subject of compulsive overeating and weight loss. Gaps that I can help you to fill, with a very short exchange of emails.
I ask nothing of you other than that you be willing to learn more than you know and I offer you knowledge that comes from sound scientific research and will provide links to this research so that you can see for yourself that the message you are making public is harming rather than helping the people I know you care so very much about.
The National Obesity Forum is sponsored by companies that make money out of obesity and they benefit from keeping people in the trap and from the repeat custom from drugs and products and services that not only don't work, but which directly cause the problem in the first place. My motivation for writing to you is ONLY to help you to see the truth and when your eyes have been opened, I do hope you won't allow yourself to remain associated with such a harmful company that disguises itself as a charity.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
I'll let you know if she replies. Watch this space.
Sx
