EatingdisordercampaignerFelicitybacks duchessoverherwarningon‘cleaneating’

AN eating disorder campaigner has welcomed a warning issued by the Duchess of Cornwall over fad diets.

Camilla voiced her fears over celebrity-inspired dairy-free and ‘clean eating’ regimes, saying young people were risking the health of their bones.

Her comments over “ridiculous dieting” came as the duchess revealed her family’s struggles with osteoporosis, a disease that killed her mother and grandmother.

Former Ms Ireland winner Felicity McKee (27), who has lived with a form of anorexia for years, praised the royal and said crash diets were “a huge concern”.

“It’s always a good thing when someone so high-profile uses their platform to discuss these issues,” she said.

“It’s a slippery slope. People can go from crash dieting to an eating disorder quite quickly, depending on genetics and other factors.

“Some people can have a pre-disposition to developing an eating disorder, which would increase the risk and reduce the timescale.”

The Armagh woman, who has a Masters degree in public health from Queen’s University, also echoed concerns over social media sites such as Instagram, which help fuel obsessions with self-image.

“Sites that allow people to share photos don’t necessarily encourage people to resort to extreme dieting but they do put pressure on them, particularly those who are vulnerable to them,” she added.

“Personally, I regularly get adverts targeted at me because I’ve looked at or interacted with something to do with weight loss or dieting.

“It’s not just as simple as just having seen something on Instagram.”

The duchess did not single out any social media firms in her remarks at an event for the Royal Osteoporosis Society, but Felicity said she thought social media sites have a responsibility to protect youths from eating disorders.

“They do have to take a more active role whether that’s simply to point out that some images have been Photoshopped or airbrushed or whatever,” she said.

“They already have mechanisms in place for people who are at risk or self-harm and suicide, so it wouldn’t seem like such a leap to have things in place when it comes to eating disorders.”

Felicity, a beauty pageant competitor who is currently studying for a PhD in disability studies Armagh woman Felicity

McKee has a form of anorexia, and (below)

Duchess of Cornwall in Wales, said she hopes to go into the field of healthcare once she finishes her studies.

As a result of her eating disorder, she suffers from a chronic electrolyte instability and requires regular transfusions to prevent her from having a cardiac arrest.

She also suffers from fibromy- algia, mental health issues and from osteoporosis in her spine, which she said is linked to her own eating problems and “was discovered when I was an in-patient for weight restoration”.

That’s why she agrees with Camilla’s assessment of needing to “find a way of educating children that they need to take care of their bodies now instead of aspiring to look like someone they see in a picture if they want to protect themselves in old age” .

“When you’re young and still developing, fad diets are especially dangerous,” she added.

“We’re seeing a recognised illness now called orthorexia, which refers to an unhealthy obsession with clean eating.”

The idea behind clean eating is to stick to “clean” foods by cooking from scratch, choosing foods that have not been processed or refined and are as close to their natural state as possible.

There are more extreme versions of the trend that may exclude gluten, grains and dairy from the diet.

“It’s easy for someone already with an eating disorder to hide behind a particular style of eating — for example you could become a pescatarian, vegetarian or vegan and use that as an excuse to cut stuff out,” she said. But while Felicity said the duchess was “definitely right” to caution the Instagram generation against crazy diets, she said “it’s not solely down to the images”.

She stressed: “Eating disorders are very complex; they are psychological, sociological and genetic.”

Vulnerable: Sir Samuel Brittan