It’s a diet plan that has been around for a while now – ‘The Dukan Diet’, first really gaining widespread British attention when Carole Middleton (Kate Middleton’s mother) claimed to have lost 4lbs in 4 days on it prior to the Royal Wedding in 2011. Since then it has become one of the most notorious and controversial diets since Atkins and its French creator, Pierre Dukan, has risen to fame alongside it.
Earlier this year in one of his most talked-about moves so far Dukan wrote in his book ‘An Open Letter to the Future President’ that in their last two years of high school education a teenager’s BMI should be taken into consideration when it comes to exam results. Those who maintain an acceptable BMI will be given extra marks. “Obesity is a real public health problem that is rarely – if at all – taken into account by politicians,” Mr Dukan told French newspaper ‘Le Parisien’ ahead of the book’s launch, he also said his education plan would be “a good way to sensitise teenagers to the need for a balanced diet.”
Whilst it is important to educate young people, and perhaps provide incentives, about the importance of maintaining a healthy weight, doing so in such a way at such a pressurised time in a young person’s life is probably not the best way to go about it. It doesn’t seem unlikely that someone worried about not passing this BMI test would take drastic measures around the time of their exams such as starving themselves to ensure they got those extra marks, and at such an important time this can be even more damaging.
Furthermore many wonder if Dukan is really the right man to be giving such advice, though he is a doctor he has asked for his name to be taken off the medical register to avoid being condemned by his colleagues. When news of Dukan’s stance on awarding extra marks according to weight was released in his motherland there was public outcry as well as a complaint from the French College of Physicians. If you haven’t heard of his notorious diet plan, The Dukan Diet, it involves ten days of eating almost purely protein, and dieticians have labelled it confusing, time consuming and very rigid. They have warned that followers could suffer from lack of energy, constipation and bad breath.
Dukan’s diet has many followers who sing the praises of both the diet and its creator, but is it really the author of a fad diet that should be giving out advice to impressionable teens at a time that’s already hard enough? Or could this be just the sort of radical thinking that is needed in a world facing rapidly increasing rates of obesity? Whatever your view it is unlikely Dukan’s suggestions will be taken too seriously, school exams are to measure talent and intelligence – weight should not become a factor.
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