However outrageous you might think the Dukan diet is, Pierre Dukan, the nutritionist responsible for this low carb diet, has thought up an even more unfathomable weight loss trick and it involves motivating young people to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight by bringing a weight loss marking system into the classroom! He sent his proposal to the 16 French presidential candidates on Tuesday and titled the short book, ‘An Open letter to the Future President’.
Dukan suggests that the French A- level equivalent, ‘le baccalaureat’, should incorporate an ‘ideal weight’ portion to these final examinations which would necessitate that the student maintained a healthy BMI of between 18 and 25 in order to earn extra points towards their final academic scores. With entrance to French universities entirely dependent on a points system, we can imagine that the pressure would definitely make a success of the proposal but we are not sure about how ethical the system would be if employed.
Dukan charitably suggests that teenagers who are double the healthy weight at the beginning of the two year course would score double the points for losing the weight by the time the marking commences. This is hardly fair on the naturally thin, academic swatters and what sort of bullying would this competitive fixation on weight loss promote at high school level? This sort of system could lead to students having a very dysfunctional relationship with food.
The nutritionist calls on the politicians for help as he fears the increasing obesity epidemic in France is no longer a health problem but a political concern. This we understand, but to take a political problem like this and to play it out in the classroom is irresponsible.