The Grand Tour host Jeremy Clarkson, 59, is known for being outspoken about all manner of subjects ranging from the current coronavirus crisis to the recent Australian bushfires. And now Good Morning Britain host Susanna Reid, 49, has criticised the car-enthusiast over his suggestions on how to combat obesity in the UK.
It comes after Baroness Deborah Bull said body-shaming should be treated like racism and sexism and should be regulated by new laws in a recent interview with The Telegraph.
Britain’s top ballet dancer also suggested research showed teasing and harassing obese people led them to put on more weight and increased their risk of eating disorders.
In Susanna’s latest column for MailOnline, the GMB host agreed with this viewpoint as she believed “feeling bad can drive to comfort eating”.
She explained: “Yet Jeremy Clarkson wants to harness fat-shaming to prevent obesity in children.
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“He wrote over the weekend, ‘I would urge the thin and the good-looking to step up their fat attacks. Blow out your cheeks when passing us in the street. Because if we, the grown-ups, stop being fat, then it’s likely our children will stop being fat as well.’”
Susanna continued: “But surely anyone who’s ever tried to lose weight knows this approach is nonsense. There’s nothing positive about being humiliated for your size.”
She added: “Britain’s top ballet dancers said that the effects of fat-shaming are so damaging that it should be treated like racism. She’s backed up by 100 academics, who say weight-based prejudice is rife. The NHS, they claim, leaves the overweight feeling stigmatised and shamed.”
The GMB star’s remarks come after Jeremy recently wrote about childhood obesity and said people should target the parents to combat the issue.
Writing in The Sunday Times, Jeremy admitted he had “sympathy” for parents whose children are obese but those same children tend to be “unhappy” and ultimately eat more.
He explained: “They’re in a vicious circle, because the more they eat, the more they don’t look like those people on Love Island, and that makes them even more unhappy.”
While Jeremy argued that “teasing fat children is wrong” when it comes to the parents, “it’s a very different story”.
He said: “If you sit there on the sofa every night, washing chocolate and curry down with gallons of rosé, which is what I do, you are subtly letting your children know that it’s OK to look like the b*****d love child of an elephant and a hot-air balloon.”
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Jeremy claimed he wants others to call out overweight people, saying: “Point out that not moving is the new smoking and that we are going to bankrupt the NHS with our spineless, weak-willed attitude to booze and biscuits.
“Use extreme cruelty to bring us back into line, because if we, the grown-ups, stop being fat, then it’s likely our children will stop being fat as well.”
Elsewhere, the former Top Gear host revealed he thought he had become victim to the coronavirus after a recent trip to Africa earlier this month.
The small-screen star visited Tanzania but revealed during his stay he had become unwell.
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Speaking in The Sun, he explained: “I was short of breath, I had a dry cough, my limbs ached and I was so lethargic I didn’t even have the energy to ask the barman for another beer.
“This was excellent news. It meant I had the coronavirus.”
Once he returned to the UK, Jeremy had contacted his local NHS health centre where he was informed of the government guidelines and he should stay at home.
A healthcare professional later explained to him that because he wasn’t in a coronavirus hotspot that he shouldn’t “worry” and he was unlikely to have the illness.
Jeremy said: “So having been cleared to move by Riley, I went to the doctor, who took blood from my finger and put it in a machine.”
The Grand Tour host was given the all-clear and there was “nothing major” to worry about “except your liver function’s off” he joked.
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