Eat a Parasite and Lose Weight?

hThere is a new diet trend in Asia - eating parasites to lose weight. The above picture was taken from an ad in the early 1900s. Are we actually moving backwards instead of forwards here? How could we go back to this kind of life threatening diet?

Women and girls in Asia are feeling a tremendous amount of pressure to stay thin and unfortunately, exercise is not recommended because muscles on a woman is not considered attractive.

I am all for different cultures and what they contribute to the world; after all, the world would be pretty boring if everyone was the same. However, when one of your "cultural differences" means eating disorders, malnutrition and potentially death, I think that something should be done about it.

We can't stop women from feeling bad about their bodies; this is a choice that each individual woman has to make for herself. We can, however, regulate which diet products and ads are approved to be released to the public.

One might add that educating people about the dangers of putting a parasitic worm that lays 200,000 eggs per day might help the problem as well, but in my opinion, it wouldn't stop the problem. It is obvious that ingesting a parasite is bad for the body. I think that we have to go deeper here - much deeper.

The women in Asia are suffering from the same disease that women in North America have - it's just a little more advanced in Asia! Girls in North America as young as 7 and 8 years old are worrying about their body image. When I was 8, my biggest worry was that bedtime would come before I was done playing. I certainly never thought about pimples, how big my nose was or about how "fat" I looked in my clothes! My childhood was much happier for it.

What can we do about this problem? We can't stop magazines from publishing pictures of "perfect" people, and we can't stop pop stars from exuding the wrong type of self image to our youth, but we can teach our children to value what is important, and to be comfortable with who they are.