Brit food writer speaks out against celebrating excessive thinness

London, Sept 30 (ANI): British food writer Nigella Lawson has expressed concern on how an increasing number of young people are suffering from eating disorders as they try to maintain a thin figure.

Lawson, 50, who is renowned for her indulgent recipes, said she worried that dieting has become "normalised" for teenagers.

She also said that watching her mother, Vanessa, struggle with eating disorders throughout her life, made her determined not to follow in her footsteps, and to instead have a positive relationship with food.

"I think that's probably very much the basis of my anti-diet stance," the Telegraph quoted her as saying.

"As a consequence, my act of teen rebellion was not being skinny... in my experience, enjoying food is probably a good way of not getting into that binge mentality.

"It's not that I think it's good to eat unhealthily, I don't, but I can see how corrosive obsessive dieting can be.

"And what I would say now as a parent - you know, I've got teenage children - is that I'm quite taken aback how much anorexia now seems to be pretty much equal in both sexes. I notice both male and female.

"In many senses it's slightly normalised because people routinely congratulate one another for eating less or for losing weight. 'Have you lost weight?' is meant to be a nice thing to say to someone.

"So, of course, you don't have to extrapolate very far and that gets to be a celebration of excessive thinness," she stated. (ANI)