Magazine journalist and publisher behind the F-plan diet
Audrey Eyton, who has died aged 83, was a journalist who did more than any TV chef to shape Britain’s eating habits, said The Guardian. In 1970, she co-founded Slimming, a hugely popular monthly magazine which introduced some much-needed science into the world of weight loss, and spawned a host of slimming clubs; then, 12 years later, she devised and published her 1,500-calorie-a-day F-plan diet. The F stood for fibre, and the book proved an instant hit, selling more than four million copies. In part, it had been inspired by her son Matthew’s problems at boarding school. His bowel movements were in a “shocking state”, she explained; she read up on the subject – and realised that more fibre was the answer.
Audrey Gray was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, in 1936, the daughter of a travelling salesman. Her childhood, she would say, was spent in a “pebble-dash semi” with “pebble-dash attitudes”, but she loved horses – and escaped to a nearby stables. Educated at Blackburn Girls’ High School, she left at 16 to become a reporter on the Accrington Observer. After three years, she moved to London, ironing out her Lancashire accent along the way, and got a job at Woman magazine, on the beauty desk. Beauty was not her thing, she said – but slimming was. “It was scientific, and it brought the biggest response from readers.” In the late 1960s, she and her husband Tom Eyton – a former newspaper sub-editor – came up with the idea of a slimming magazine. Their critics thought the idea was crazy: who would buy a magazine that only draws attention to their weight problems? But the Eytons were convinced there was a market for evidence-based advice; they launched it from their kitchen table – and within three months, it had a circulation of 140,000, said The Daily Telegraph. One of its early issues hailed the Queen as a “potential fatty” who should be held up as an example to business executives who stuff their faces at their expense account lunches, then complain when they fail to lose weight. In 1980, she and Tom – from whom she was now divorced – sold the business for an estimated £4m. Two years later, she produced her F-plan diet, the success of which turned wholemeal bread, bran cereals and pulses into supermarket staples.
She and Tom had had two sons. The first, Richard, was born seriously disabled and died after ten days. “I wasn’t sorry to see him die,” she said in 2005. “There are worse things than your baby dying. It is much worse to see your child suffering.” She was referring to the difficulties endured by her second son, Matthew, who suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder, and committed suicide aged 24. He had inherited her love of animals, and left a note reading: “Please go on working for the animals,” and so she did. She set up the Matthew Eyton Animal Welfare Trust in his memory, and devoted herself to campaigning against factory farming. “I decided I couldn’t spend my time weeping, and the best memorial is the way you live your life,” she said.