Famine can do wonders for your figure. Are you struggling to shed those stubborn final pounds? Food shortages, vitamin deprivation, and government rationing will help you get over the wall. You may die from it, but the weight loss will make you look fabulous.
At least, that's the takeaway from a Sky News interview this week featuring double Olympic gold medalist James Cracknell, a member of the Conservative Party who has aspirations of becoming a member of the U.K. Parliament.
"If you think of the two countries in the world that got a handle on obesity, what do you think they are? Which two countries?" Cracknell asked.
One of his hosts responded, "I don't know."
"North Korea and Cuba. They're quite controlling on behavioral change, so there is a place where it has to be worked and you have to get people to buy into it," the Olympian said.
One host interjected with some fairly important background information, "Yeah, but people are starving in North Korea, aren't they? You know, they're not obese because they haven't got any food."
"Well, exactly," Cracknell responded. "But there were sanctions and everything else. But the example is behavioral change."
If it's any comfort to Cracknell, whose comments are being criticized all over social media, he's not alone in suggesting famine is great for weight management.
Cosmopolitan said basically the same thing a few years ago when it praised the "Cuban diet."
"Between 1990 and 1995, thanks to the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuban people were forced to alter their entire lifestyles. They couldn't afford petrol, so the government provided them with bicycles. People started walking everywhere. Food was also in shorter supply there were no supermarket aisles stuffed with junk food or wallets stuffed with money with which to buy it," Cosmopolitan's Rosie Mullender wrote in 2013.
She added, "In short, Cubans could no longer afford to be fat. In that five-year period, they lost an average of around five kilos per person, which is over 11lbs. As a result of people getting slimmer, they also started living longer, with fewer Cubans dying of diabetes and heart disease."
Going out on a limb here, but pretty sure the Cubans didn't think of the food shortages, economic crisis and government-imposed rationing as a fun, figure-trimming "diet."
That's like hyping the "Death March of Bataan" for all the calories burned. Think of all the steps those POWs got!
Cosmopolitan's "Cuban diet" garbage is almost as bad as when it published an article last week about one woman's amazing weight loss story. The woman, 31-year-old Simone Harbinson, lost 44 pounds without any exercise!
Her secret? Cancer.
To recap: Famine and cancer are great for weight loss, according to Cosmopolitan and a would-be British MP. No word yet on whether the other horsemen of the apocalypse make good personal trainers.
