The Dukan Diet

I hadn't heard of the Dukan Diet until this week!!! Where have I been, you may well ask!
But nonetheless, it has finally come to my attention, and I am fascinated by what French diet doctor Pierre Dukan has to say himself about his own creation.
Speaking to Lucy Cavendish in an interview for The Times Magazine last weekend, he explained to her why we eat too much. We are empty, he says. We need food yes, but we also need love and spirituality and beauty and nature and if we fall short on any of these we fill the gap with food.
Now that caught my attention because it is what I have been saying. It is symptomatic of our general malaise that we not only eat to fill a gap, but shop and shop to fill another gap in our needs - and that is appropriately enough called "retail therapy."
He concluded his interview with Cavendish on this self same note. "Industrialised nations are all about growth and consumerism. What makes us 'appy," he told her, are things that are free - "love, the air, belief and nature... but this does not make growth possible so we are all told to consume, consume, consume. We 'ave to stop doing it..." Just what I have been saying!
"So," Cavendish asks, "this diet is a call for a quiet revolution against consumerism?"
Yes, he replies. and what is more he is taking his message to America. He is going to tour the United States later this month with the American version of his book. I hope his message is well received. The book is already a massive best seller.