So There

A doc in London sums it up nicely:

The Telegraph, London - Doctor's diary: James Le Fanu takes a look at obesity

No doubt reflecting the seasonal preoccupation with weight matters, there currently seem to be a lot of stories on this theme in the papers: fat dogs (and fat owners), fat South African lady stuck in a tunnel of love, MPs "alarmed" about an obesity epidemic in schoolchildren and, best of all, the claim that some people are now overeating so as to qualify for weight reduction surgery.

Meanwhile, back in the surgery, it has become a lot easier to turn down the customary New Year request for slimming pills by pointing to the physical transformation of several of the staff. They are all beneficiaries of the high-protein/low-carb approach.

The effectiveness of this type of diet is certainly a great embarrassment to the legion of medical experts who, over the past 20 years, have insisted that eating a lot of meat and dairy products is bad for the heart – quite wrongly, as it turns out.

Indeed, just six weeks ago, Dr Thomas Halton of Harvard reported in the New England Journal of Medicine the findings of a study showing it is women on the medically approved low-fat diet who have the higher risk of heart disease. So there.