Do you want to lose weight? It's better not to ask how!

In France, anyone who promotes excessive thinness and debilitating diets may end up in prison if a bill is passed to solve the problem of anorexia.

The proposal to punish for encouraging excessive thinness in magazines, on Internet sites and in other media was put forward against the background of a rapid increase in the number of diseases caused by improper nutrition. In France, about 40 thousand people suffer from anorexia, a disease usually found in adolescent children, and the absolute majority of them are women. These figures, although they indicate a much less alarming situation than has developed in the UK, still cast doubt on the claim that France is not threatened by the nutritional problems faced by other Western countries.

The bill, which will be discussed next week, assumes a penalty of three years in prison and a fine of 45 thousand euros for inciting a person to actions that later led to his death from anorexia. If a fatal outcome was avoided, the provocateur faces two years in prison. The law does not persecute those who advise people on correct, harmless diets. His task is to punish those who force people to refuse food in order to lose too much weight, as well as those who openly promote anorexia.

The development of the bill coincided with the appearance of a charter signed by representatives of the French fashion industry that only models who do not suffer from excessive thinness should participate in fashion shows. Valerie Boyer, a senator from the right-wing Union in Support of the People's Movement party, says that she was prompted to draft the bill by a shocking advertising campaign by one firm, the face of which was a Frenchwoman suffering from anorexia.

On the other hand, in France, as in the USA and the UK, a real epidemic of obesity is raging, aggravated by the increase in the consumption of unhealthy food – snacks and fast food, bought in haste in snack bars and vending machines, and a severe lack of physical activity.

Although the number of obese adults in the UK is more than twice the same for France (25% versus 10%), the percentage of children affected by this disease is almost the same in both countries.

The Daily Telegraph
Translation: Gazeta

Portal "Eternal youth" www.vechnayamolodost.ru
14.04.2008