A draft law in France is looking to punish "incitement to excessive thinness" in magazines, on websites and in other media.

The punishment could include up to 3 years jail time.

It seems the law will target pro-anorexia bloggers and websites. The French Health Minister stated "These Web sites that propagate messages of death must be the subject of particular vigilance."

The proposal comes at the same time as the French fashion industry are signing up to a new (voluntary) charter promoting health body image:

Book author and medical writer Thomas Hager has written a fascinating essay about starvation and obesity.

He asks the question "who's making us fat?". A question that researchers have debated for many years.

With the huge growth in population over the last few decades - shouldn't we have run out of food by now? Instead we're mostly overweight - so what happened?

A large study of more than 44,000 nurses shows that waist size is strongly associated with death rates independently of body mass index.

Published in Circulation, the research also concludes that:

It seems it's more important to have a waist-to-hip ratio of less than 0.88 than it is to be "normal weight". The definition for abdominal obesity is set at a waist circumference of 34.6 inches for women (and 40 inches for men).

As an example (from WebMD)
Among women of normal weight, those with a waist larger than 34.6 inches were three times as likely to die of heart disease, compared to women with smaller waists.

Again we see the frailt

8 glasses - that's what most people think they need as a daily requirement. Copious water intake is supposed to keep organs functioning properly, skin supple and body weight at bay. Nonsense! - say researchers from the University of Pennsylvania who conducted a study to test these theories (which will be published in the June issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology).

We all know that our bodies need water, but nobody quite knows exactly how much. Let's take a look at where this misconception began, shed some light on water and hydration and look at some more realistic water goals.

Let's be clear on something right out of the shoot. Water is the hub of all chemical processes in the body and the king of all nutrients. We should be drinking it d