January is the peak month for those seeking to sell us the latest diet.
Whether it’s the Keto diet, intermittent fasting, the Paleo diet or even the apple cider vinegar diet, those promoting them have just one aim in mind: relieving gullible people of their excess pounds.
And I’m not talking about their weight, but the contents of their bank balance.
Such faddy diets tend to have one thing in common: they are popular for a short period of time, but they are neither sustainable nor healthy, often because they restrict key nutrients which our bodies need to survive.
But why would their creators care about that?
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Once they have your money, they can go away and dream up another, equally dodgy craze which they can sell those who have realised that the last one didn’t make them any healthier or even help them lose weight.
The thing is, many of us could really do with eating more healthily, both because more than one in four of us is obese according to the Health Survey for England, and because for too many people food is not a pleasure but a problem.
You would be right in assuming that I am no follower of the latest dieting fashion, so you may be surprised to learn that there is one emerging eating philosophy which I do think makes sense: it is called ‘mindful eating’.
Mindful is one of those words which Gen Z seems to have adopted (and changed the meaning of), and it is certainly not a word which you would usually hear coming from my lips.
So let me explain what mindful eating is all about: in essence, it is about building a closer connection to what we eat, and being fully present and paying full attention our food.
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It is not strictly about losing weight, nor is it about following strict rules about what or how much we eat.
But if you adopt this approach, there is every chance you will lose a few pounds, and they are more likely to stay off, too.
If this all sounds like our diet food, and help us have the same kind of connection with it that is regarded as perfectly normal in countries which don’t share the UK’s often dysfunctional relationship with food.
You see, in places like France and Italy, there is no such thing as mindful eating; they are already so connected with what they put on their plate that they just would just regard it as normal eating.
And that is where we need to get to if we are to transform our dietary health as a nation.
So what does it mean in practice?
More than anything, it means concentrating on what and how we eat.
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How often do we eat because we feel sad or bored or lonely, rather than because we are genuinely hungry?
How often do we choose what we eat based on the need for emotional comfort rather than nutrition?
And most importantly, how often do we regard eating as a secondary activity while we do something else, whether that is scrolling through social media on our phones, or walking around?
Mindful eating is about paying attention at the table, eating slowly and savouring your food, and avoiding distractions.
It is also about listening to your body and stopping eating when you no longer feel hungry.
It is about spending time at the table and ideally sharing that time with others, so that the meal becomes an occasion in itself.
It is about celebrating what you are eating, and taking pleasure from it. It is about slow food, taking your time and appreciating every mouthful (not just shovelling it in beyond the point you are hungry).
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As a nation, we have developed a really toxic relationship with food, mainly because we don’t regard it as important enough.
Which is crazy, given that it is something that each and every one of us has to do every day to survive and thrive.
That is why so many of us are overweight, and it’s why so many of us are compromising our long-term health without even the compensation of any short-term pleasure.
The societies which are healthiest are those which place food right at the centre of their lives, who turn what is a bodily necessity into a real pleasure. It’s a lesson which we would do well to take on board.