Prince Harry, mental health and the need for a more caring society | Letters

In my view, those who try to come up with totalising explanations of mental health are misguided (Letters, 20 April). It’s neither purely social nor purely individualistic, though effective help should start from actually listening to and honouring the individual case. Often in practice it does not, and I would agree with Professor Read that a biogenetic medical model is generally inappropriate and can actually be damaging. It also goes radically unacknowledged that there are various different types of bereavement, some of which are far more traumatic than others, and are not directly comparable. The effects of traumatic sudden bereavement experienced in childhood or adolescence can last for years and ultimately for a lifetime, as the princes have now highlighted. It is known that this type of bereavement can sometimes result in lasting shock followed by delayed grief years later, yet there is often little or no acknowledgment readily available, never mind any effective support.

On top of this, and especially in a culture of competition, the bereaved are often subjected to cutting comments, judgments and dismissals. Sometimes these are from those who claim to know what it’s like because their grandparent or cat has died, while sometimes they are from people in medical or authority positions whose callous judgmental ignorance can be devastating. Why does it require the intervention of princes to highlight the issue? At least they get taken seriously.
LE Collier
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

• It seems to me that a potential key to improving psychological provision for common human grief and misery (Freud’s term) is not only more better-trained, organised professionals, but also a more compassionate and empathic caring society attuned to the emotional needs of others. Where many families are so economically impoverished, they barely have the inner resources, strength and resilience left to attend to each other’s mental pain and suffering. What chance this election gives us all an opportunity to change our minds about the material hardship and distress we are causing those most in need of help, so they can move on?
Ya’ir Z Klein
London

• Keith Farman asks whether bereavement is a mental illness. Before answering, note that Harry says he suffered from denying grief when his mother died, not from the grief itself. While grief is a normal reaction to loss that cannot be blamed on others or self, its first stage is usually denial, which may help deal with events following the loss and which I believe is an illness. However, as confidence recovers, fear should subside and a second stage of grief usually occurs when the rage or fear roused by the loss is normally expressed. This is not evidence of mental illness. Alison Sesi says children cannot yet express their feelings effectively. This should not be so. But they may not experience grief but the simpler hate, sadness, anxiety or rage. I suggest that when our species acquired verbal language, most societies came to believe in gods and devils. Though later religions used these to help sustain laws and customs, they do not exist. So mental illness has long been endemic.
George Talbot
Watford, Hertfordshire

• Professor Samuels never misses an opportunity to take a swipe at the evidence-based psychological therapy now available on the NHS. Prince Harry is at liberty to choose whatever sort of therapy he wishes and his comments, which seek to normalise and reduce the stigma attached to mental health problems, are very welcome. We don’t know what sort of therapy Prince Harry had, but scientific evidence suggests that had he attended eight to 12 sessions of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) at his local GP surgery for the traumatic bereavement he experienced, the outcome would have been a good one.
Hal Westergaard
(Cognitive behavioural therapist), Bath  

• It was with interest that I read Andrew Molodynski’s comments regarding ECT as a useful option for treatment resistant major depressive disorder (Shock treatment on increase again in NHS, 18 April). I have experienced this horrible illness along with anorexia for a number of years. I underwent a significant number of ECT treatments. Apart from some short-term memory loss, it is painless, and one is unconscious for a very short period. For me it was life-saving. I don’t  think I would be alive today without it. If the need arose I would willingly have it again. Although medical treatments may help the many symptoms of severe depression, it frequently returns time and time again.

The causes of this life-altering illness need to be untangled if treatments are to succeed. This is where psychologists/psychotherapy may have the answers. In an underfunded and understaffed mental health service, therapy can be difficult to access. I have been one of the fortunate ones. Let no one underestimate the distress of severe depression on the individual and their loved ones, and the challenges it presents to mental health staff. ECT is an important life-saving treatment for people like myself.
Sheila Cook
London

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Prince Harry, mental health and the need for a more caring society | Letters

Prince Harry shows how NHS psychiatric services could move on | Letters

While experts are right to congratulate Prince Harry (Harry praised for telling of ‘chaos’ over Diana’s death, 18 April), and call for more spending on mental health, there is an elephant in the room. Mental health services are dominated by an outdated, simplistic medical model of distress that is rather at odds with the prince’s views. While he makes the obvious link between painful life events and mental health difficulties, our services are still telling distressed people that they have illnesses, like major depressive disorder, caused by chemical imbalances – an unsubstantiated drug company creation – and by inferior genes that make them more vulnerable than others to depression, anxiety, psychosis etc.

Unlike Harry’s psychosocial approach, this socially blind bio-genetic model actually increases prejudice, by using stigmatising labels and exaggerating differences. It has also led to over 62m prescriptions of antidepressants annually in England, at a cost of about £800m a day to the NHS. Our children too are being labelled and drugged at an equally alarming rate. Time for psychiatric services to move on from the failed diagnose-and-medicate approach and start asking us what happened to us, and what we actually need.
Professor John Read
University of East London

• Is bereavement a mental illness? Does grief require medical treatment? It is a profound mistake to treat such essential aspects of the human condition, and our responses to them, as purely personal “in-the-mind” medical crises, evidence of “ill-health”.

It is the overwhelming assault of our culture on our sense of personal space, time to be, not just to do; that generates much of the distress. The shame and stigma won’t be removed from this distress until we realise that it is not simply an individual, personal illness – though sometimes it becomes that – but a social, cultural malaise that will be deepened, not alleviated, by pills or sometimes misdirected talk therapies.
Keith Farman
St Albans, Hertfordshire

• Although Prince Harry’s revelations have rightly been praised by mental health experts, it would be helpful to focus on the particular issues surrounding those of us who have been bereaved in childhood.

First, the adults around us do not know how to approach us; second, we are commonly isolated in terms of the experience within our peer group; third, we have not yet developed the means to express our feelings effectively to the adult world around us. Add to that the “scorched earth of English repression”, as Richard Beard so brilliantly described it (Family, 8 April), and the fact that you miss out on natural processes in relationships that are part of growing into adulthood, and you may well finish up with a toxic foundation of anger within you.

Those bereaved in childhood have been widely misunderstood and ignored; the prince’s remarks allow us at least to start a debate as to how we should treat this most vulnerable group.
Alison Sesi
Billericay, Essex

• Suzanne Moore writes (Harry got help. Many others deserve it too, 18 April) that no one touched the two young princes during their mother’s funeral service. But why would anyone want to display public emotion, knowing that columnists were looking down on them? The family she saw that day was no different to other families who do not show their emotions at a funeral. Many people, frozen in grief, cognitive processing and exhaustion, are paralysed when it comes to being on display while they deconstruct and reconstruct what is in the coffin in front of them.

One message of the royals’ Heads Together campaign is not to judge other people, because you don’t know their circumstances.
Miriam Fitzpatrick
Dublin, Ireland

• Prince Harry is fortunate to have had what is increasingly being called “real therapy”, meaning in-depth and enjoying a trusted relationship with the “shrink” (to use his word). This kind of private practice therapy has almost completely vanished from the NHS and the public sector because all funding is being sucked up by the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies scheme. In this manualised and medicalised state therapy system, with economic rather than psychological goals, it takes a long time and much judgmental evaluation before a few get even cognitive behavioural therapy. We can be pretty sure that CBT is not what was offered to the prince.

It is time for the Department of Health to acknowledge that the old-style psychotherapy and counselling did a lot of good, and that it is still possible to restore it.
Professor Andrew Samuels
Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex

Non-contact boxing can help people with mental health issues, says Martin Bisp. Photograph: VisitBritain/Getty Images

• I read, with interest and admiration, Prince Harry’s comments regarding how boxing helped him (Report, 18 April). This is something we, at Empire Fighting Chance, already know. We have had massive success with our own non-contact boxing programme for people with mental health issues, often engaging those that traditional services fail.

My co-founder and I have spoken at numerous all-party parliamentary groups about how it is possible to help those most in need by offering something different. However, there seems a real reluctance to invest in and integrate credible, community-based programmes.

Yet everyone can benefit from a community intervention: treatments are not class, race or postcode dependent. Deprivation is a huge factor for poor mental health and the poorer you are the less likely you are to know about or access services. Having something based in your community, provided by a name you know and trust, works. People are not embarrassed to attend – in our case they are proud to say they are going to the boxing gym. Once in it, they train like everyone else, they are not “on display” in some sterile leisure centre, so we get better results.

Finally in a time where funding is hard to come by, budgets are stretched and the health service is under tremendous pressure, we must recognise the role within that sports-led community projects can offer and look to innovate delivery. Resourcing them adequately appears to make sense from a business and, much more importantly, human angle.
Martin Bisp
Chief executive officer, Empire Fighting Chance

• Today’s underfunded NHS is unlikely to increase access to the support needed by those processing emotional trauma. I and many others, in UK and internationally, have found help from co-counselling, a peer-support system that, after a 40-hour training course, gives access to lifelong listening support that is comfortable with emotions. Pills and professionals have their place, but, as Harry said, listening is more helpful than advice for working through emotional issues that are an inherent part of being human.
Jean Brant
Birmingham

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Prince Harry shows how NHS psychiatric services could move on | Letters

Prince William: suicide callout shed light on men"s mental health

The Duke of Cambridge has spoken of his shock at being called out to his first suicide as an air ambulance pilot in a joint interview with his brother, Prince Harry, on tackling masculinity and mental health issues.

Prince William said the “tipping point” for him in understanding how men struggle to deal with mental health problems came with his work with the East Anglian air ambulance.

“My first callout was to a male suicide and I was told there were five suicides or attempted suicides every day in East Anglia alone. When I looked into it I was shocked by how bad this situation is – suicide is the biggest killer of men under 45 in the UK – which is absolutely appalling.”

He praised grime star Stormzy, sportsmen Rio Ferdinand and Freddie Flintoff, and rapper Professor Green for publicly talking about pressures on their mental health.

The interview with the princes is part of a campaign to encourage better communication about mental health issues. It follows Harry’s revelations that he sought counselling after coming close to a breakdown over the death of his mother and had two years of “total chaos” that led him to process his grief.

The interview, with CALMzine, published by the Campaign Against Living Miserably, is for a special edition before the London Marathon, during which the princes and the Duchess of Cambridge will cheer on runners taking part for their mental health campaign, Heads Together, which is the charity of the year for the marathon.

Talking about how men often feel it was a sign of weakness to discuss their mental health, William said: “There may be a time and a place for the stiff upper lip, but not at the expense of your health. The recent interview by Stormzy about his depression was incredibly powerful and will help young men feel that it’s a sign of strength to talk about and look after your mind as well as your body.

He said he hoped subsequent generations would find it more normal to talk about their emotions. “Catherine and I are clear that we want both George and Charlotte to grow up feeling able to talk about their emotions and feelings.”

Harry, who served two tours of Afghanistan with the army and who actively campaigned to raise awareness of mental health issues within the military, believed progress was being made.

“The military is a complex picture as on one hand there is an incredible sense of brotherhood and belonging between you and your mates,” he told the magazine. “You’ll do anything for each other – scrub each other’s boots, drag each other through the mud – anything.

Stormzy’s appearance on Channel 4 news to discuss his battle with depression has been described as ‘a game changer’. Photograph: Ian West/PA

“Yet, on the other hand, this support for each other hasn’t, up to now, included looking after how your buddy is feeling and thinking about things. When you’re serving you look after your physical health, your training, your equipment, but not your head.

“There’s definitely been a misplaced sense of pride has got in the way of the people in the military community talking about their mental health and getting help. It’s changing now and I’m proud that this is part of the Heads Together campaign.

“Hopefully, if men see soldiers talking about mental health, it will give them the confidence to do the same.”

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph published on Monday, the prince reflected on the impact of his mother’s death and the time it took him to process it. “[I thought] it’s only going to make you sad, it’s not going to bring her back,” he said. “So from an emotional side, I was like ‘right, don’t ever let your emotions be part of anything’. So I was a typical 20-, 25-, 28-year-old running around going ‘life is great’, or ‘life is fine’ and that was exactly it.

“And then [I] started to have a few conversations and actually all of a sudden, all of this grief that I have never processed started to come to the forefront and I was like, there is actually a lot of stuff here that I need to deal with.”

On 19 April, four days before the marathon, the duchess will host runners from Team Heads Together at Kensington Palace to talk about their reasons for running and wish them luck.

William will attend the screening of the BBC’s Mind Over Marathon documentary at the BBC Radio Theatre on 18 April, which follows 10 runners affected by mental health issues. The royal trio will open the Global Academy in support of Heads Together on 20 April.

• In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14.
  

Prince William: suicide callout shed light on men"s mental health

The lesson of Prince Harry’s grief? We need mental health services for all | Suzanne Moore

One of my strongest memories of attending Princess Diana’s funeral is of sitting up high in Westminster Abbey and looking down on her young sons. During the long service no one touched them or hugged them, though everyone was moved by the handwritten “Mummy” card on top of her coffin. The much reviled Sarah, Duchess of York leaned over to see if they were OK. Otherwise, nothing. They were to be “brave”, I suppose. They had walked behind that coffin for a very long way, their heads bowed, impassive. Why had they been made to do that?

The dysfunction of the first family was challenged and disrupted at the funeral by Earl Spencer’s speech. The public grief was dismissed by much of the establishment – as Diana was herself – as hysterical, and it proved the polar opposite of the royal reaction. The family holed up in Balmoral. Charles could now work to get everyone to accept Camilla as his partner, which they largely did. And the boys? It seemed they must just get on with it.

Twenty years later, in a lovely interview with Bryony Gordon in the Telegraph, Prince Harry has now spoken about his grief and how it affected his mental health. The stiff upper lip and the repression required to keep it so is not the way forward. Acknowledging the problems and talking about them is.

The loss of his mother when he was 12 was at the root, Harry says, of his feeling of anxiety, which manifested itself in “fight or flight” responses when in public. He talks of his aggression – he found boxing helped with this – and the feelings of internal chaos and breakdown that come after a deliberate shut-down of emotion. He didn’t want to think about his mother as it would be too sad. Yet, of course, not thinking about loss does not mean its effects go away. Harry was supported by his brother, William; “shrinks” helped as well; and finally, being open helped too.

Seeing fellow soldiers with PTSD from serving time in Afghanistan made him realise that actually this was not the root of his mental health issues. Rather, he had pushed away emotions, shoved them right down, always saying life was fine when it wasn’t at all. “And then I started to have a few conversations and actually, all of a sudden, all this grief I had never processed started to come to the forefront and I was like, ‘There is actually a lot of stuff that I need to deal with.’”

Alongside this, he, William and Kate saw that in much of their charity work, mental health was intrinsically bound to many other issues, but not always addressed. They decided to work on this.

Harry has rightly been praised for talking personally and thus destigmatising mental health issues. This is no doubt excellent. The normalising of mental health problems, which it is estimated will affect a quarter of us at one time or another, is necessary, but so too is funding. Mental health services are in a very poor state and it is almost impossible to get help. Many people in Harry’s situation would not get access to counselling and would be offered antidepressants and possibly a short course of cognitive behavioural therapy, as this is considered most cost-effective. In acute cases, people in a state of severe breakdown are now forced to go to hospitals far from their homes because there are no beds to be found nearby. This is a real crisis, and it is more visible by the day on our streets.

Royals doing charitable work can help, but we need to think about how the whole of society copes with an epidemic of mental health problems in our young people.

Harry’s likeability and frankness, alongside William’s, have helped to rehabilitate the royals’ image: a facade of modernisation. Remember that at the time of their mother’s death the family was viewed as out of touch, anachronistic. Their lack of emotional engagement seemed to belong to another era. Charles’s treatment of Diana, and her refusal to accept the script that had been written for her, threatened their popularity. Lessons were learned and the princes have been part of this PR.

Indeed, Harry is not the first royal to go public with such issues, although I am very glad he has. His mother talked, after all, of her struggles with bulimia and her suicide attempts. She spoke of difficulties with self-esteem and how bulimia gave the illusion of comfort, followed by disgust. She talked of feelings of self-revulsion and the compulsion to “dissolve like a Disprin” back in 1993. Many dismissed her then as unstable, attention–seeking and manipulative as a result.

Twenty years after her death, the fact that her youngest child can open up in such a way and be widely praised for it shows, I hope, that the world has moved on. Now it’s time to make the help and support that was available to a prince available to all.

The lesson of Prince Harry’s grief? We need mental health services for all | Suzanne Moore

Prince Harry grief revelations draw praise from mental health experts

Mental health experts have praised Prince Harry for revealing that he sought counselling after 20 years of bottling up his grief over his mother’s death.

The prince said he had suppressed his emotions after losing his mother, Princess Diana, when he was 12. He took up boxing to help cope with feelings of aggression before finally seeking counselling.

“I have probably been very close to a complete breakdown on numerous occasions when all sorts of grief and all sorts of lies and misconceptions and everything are coming to you from every angle,” he said in an interview with the Telegraph.

Sir Simon Wessely, the president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said the prince had achieved more in terms of communicating mental health issues in a 25-minute interview than he had in a 25-year career.

“He has a reach across the world that people like me can only dream – he will have communicated in a way that I have been working all my life to achieve,” he said.

Wessely said grief – “though raw, painful and uncomfortable” – should not be viewed as a mental health problem and, for some, coping with it in silence could be the right approach.

“It’s not rocket science, and we should be wary of applying an orthodox approach to the individual experience of grief,” he said. “However there are times when prolonged grief can become a barrier, preventing us from moving on in life, and then it can become a problem which may perhaps need help.”

Marjorie Wallace, founder of the mental health charity Sane, said: “It’s done more good than many many campaigns. It’s given a message of hope that feelings left for too long can become malignant – but that it is never too late to seek help.”

Paul Farmer, chief executive of the Mind, said the interview would have a huge impact. “It’s inspiring to see Prince Harry speaking out about his experiences. It shows how far we have come in changing public attitudes to mental health that someone so high-profile can open up about something so difficult and personal,” he said.

“We know that this will have a huge impact on people who are still struggling in silence with their mental health – every time someone in the public eye speaks up we know that it encourages ordinary members of the public to do the same.

“Prince Harry speaking so candidly is a true turning point that shows that as a society we must no longer adopt a ‘stiff upper lip’ attitude and that we need to talk openly about mental health, something that affects us all directly.”

Sue Baker, director of the Time to Change mental health charity, said research showed that speaking out helps overturn stigma.

“Prince Harry sharing his experiences of mental health issues and the counselling he sought as a result of losing his mother will have helped change attitudes, not just at home but also overseas. It was a dream of mine 20 years ago that we’d see the royal family join sports people, music stars, politicians and business leaders as well as everyday people in sharing their mental health experiences in all sorts of communities,” she said.

On Twitter there was admiration for the prince for breaking the stigma over speaking of mental health and bereavement. Chuka Umunna, the former Labour shadow cabinet member, tweeted:

Chuka Umunna (@ChukaUmunna)

1/2 Big big respect to Prince Harry for opening up about his mental health and grief https://t.co/zXE3mZmyPm

April 17, 2017

Chuka Umunna (@ChukaUmunna)

2/2 Losing a parent so young is v.tough. I lost my Dad at 13 -doing so in the public eye wld have been harder still https://t.co/zXE3mZmyPm

April 17, 2017

Bryony Gordon, who interviewed the prince, told the BBC: “To hear someone of his profile talking so candidly about the stuff in his head, it’s a watershed moment, it’s so important.”

Gordon, who has had mental health problems, said if when she first became ill aged 12, a member of “the most famous family in the world” had spoken about it, the ensuing decades might have been very different.

“He has taken something massively negative and he’s turning it into a positive,” she said.

Prince Harry grief revelations draw praise from mental health experts

Prince Charles urged to cut sugar levels in Duchy Organic ice cream

Prince Charles should follow the lead of other food manufacturers by cutting the sugar in his Duchy Organic ice cream to a healthier level, health campaigners have said.

A new analysis by the Action on Sugar campaign group reveals that Duchy Organic ice cream – sold in Waitrose supermarkets – contains almost twice as much sugar as some other brands.

It was singled out by researchers as an example of the differing levels of sugar in exactly the same kinds of foods which appeal to children.

Action on Sugar is urging companies to support Public Health England’s voluntary reformulation programme to help tackle the childhood obesity epidemic, which it claims is the biggest public health crisis facing the UK.

The survey of foods commonly consumed by children including breakfast cereals, yoghurts, biscuits, cakes, confectionery, pastries, ice creams and chocolate spreads shows that products containing less sugar are in plentiful supply.

For example, Duchy Organic vanilla ice cream, with 14.5g of sugar per 100g, was found to have 84% more sugar than Asda’s “smart price” vanilla ice cream, with 7.9g sugar.

Data was collected by visiting Aldi, Asda, Co-operative, Lidl, Marks & Spencer, Morrisons, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose using the FoodSwitch app to collect data on nutritional information. The survey was carried out during August and products were checked again during September.

Tam Fry, spokesman for the National Obesity Forum and an expert advisory team member of Action on Sugar, said: “George Osborne’s sugar levy announcement in March must be regarded as his swansong as chancellor.

“At a stroke, he concentrated the mind of sugar-happy soft drink manufacturers seriously to consider reformulating their products to an acceptable level.

“As Action on Sugar’s research shows, many food manufacturers got the message, too. All, and Prince Charles in particular, should now follow their lead. The added bonus is that they will have dramatically aided the health of millions of people, let alone the NHS.”

A spokesperson for Waitrose said the Duchy Organic vanilla ice cream was an “indulgent” treat not aimed at children, adding: “The sugar content is clearly labelled and we sell a range of vanilla ice creams with a significantly lower sugar content, which our customers can choose if they want a healthier option.

“Reducing sugar is a top priority and we have an extensive reformulation programme to achieve this, which has already included significantly reducing sugar in chilled juices, cereals, yoghurts, soups, cordials and fizzy drinks.”

Kawther Hashem, a nutritionist and researcher at Action on Sugar, said:“Unhealthy foods are the biggest cause of death and disability in the UK and it is time the food industry took their responsibility for this seriously.

“They now need to make this a priority and ensure children are not eating three times their daily maximum intake of sugar.”

Graham MacGregor, professor of cardiovascular medicine at Queen Mary University of London and chair of Action on Sugar, said reformulation was one of the most effective ways of reducing sugar and, if done properly, meant the UK could lead the world in this area.

“We therefore urge the prime minister, Theresa May, to fully support it and commit the government to both fat reformulation, as it’s the biggest source of calories than sugar, and to start restrictions of marketing, advertising and promotion of unhealthy foods.”

In August, leading retailers criticised the government’s watered-down childhood obesity strategy just days after its publication, arguing it would be better if ministers imposed mandatory cuts to sugar levels in food rather than leaving it up to voluntary initiatives by manufacturers.

Prince Charles urged to cut sugar levels in Duchy Organic ice cream

Prince Harry: I regret not talking about my mother"s death sooner

Prince Harry has said he regrets not talking sooner about how his mother’s death affected him.

The 31-year-old revealed he only began opening up three years ago about the sudden death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

Harry was hosting an event at Kensington Palace for the mental health charity Heads Together, attended by a group of high-profile sports stars who were invited to speak about their psychological problems.

The former England and Manchester United defender Rio Ferdinand, and Olympic gold medallists Victoria Pendleton and Dame Kelly Holmes were among the guests. Each was accompanied by a partner, relative or sports psychologist who had helped them through their darkest moments.

The BBC reported that Ferdinand, whose wife Rebecca Ellison died of cancer last year, asked Harry about the impact of her death on his children. Referring to the death of his own mother, Harry replied: “I really regret not ever talking about it.”

He added that he did not speak about losing his mother “for the first 28 years of my life”. Harry was 12 and his brother William 15 when Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris on 31 August 1997.

Harry added: “It’s OK to suffer, as long as you talk about it. It’s not a weakness. Weakness is having a problem and not recognising it and not solving that problem.”

Heads Together was founded by Harry and the duke and duchess of Cambridge, and it has brought together eight mental health charities and organisations to tackle the stigma around depression and other psychological problems.

Ferdinand, a father of three, said of the prince: “He’s gone through different stages in his life that my kids are going to be going towards. So to get some of his experiences is very rewarding for me and very educational in many ways.”

Harry added: “The key message here today is that everyone can suffer from mental health [issues]. Whether you’re a member of the royal family, whether you’re a soldier, whether you’re a sports star, whether you’re a team sport, individual sport, whether you’re a white van driver, whether you’re a mother, father, a child, it doesn’t really matter.”

Prince Harry: I regret not talking about my mother"s death sooner

Prince Fielder, Weight problems Studies And The Moral Hazard Of Unwanted fat Obsession

America’s excess fat obsession is raging once more this week, what with baseball star Prince Fielder getting the audacity to get nude and Stanford University researchers engaging in the “exercise vs. diet” tennis match. Your serve, diet program.

Even however I misplaced 80 lbs 4 summers ago I even now, and probably often will, feel like a particular person with fat troubles for factors too complicated for this publish. When I saw people two news objects burn across Twitter and Facebook yesterday, I wish anger would have been my major response. It wasn’t. It was fatigue. When you are obese for forty years of your existence, these 40 years in certain, the barrage of America’s body fat obsession ultimately collapses your capability for anger.

But Twitter especially gave it a college try out yesterday. I don’t see any reason to quote it. Go here if you truly want to uncover the vitriol (and some great defenders too). Producing fun of a professional baseball player, with 288 property runs, 277 doubles and 866 RBI in his ten yr job, is fine I guess. But twice I noticed pictures of youthful, obese children with a baseball turn out to be the butt of Prince Fielder jokes. Maintain it classy, tweeps.

Stanford University School of Medication researchers are less cynical, though the Stanford News Center may well have done nicely to decide on a better illustration than a slovenly dude slumped on a couch with a remote handle. Nevertheless, the information they reported is fascinating:

Examining nationwide health survey outcomes from 1988 by means of 2010, the researchers discovered enormous increases in each obesity and inactivity, but not in the overall amount of calories consumed.

Hold reading and you see the warning that will in no way be written in a headline, that, “because it is an observational study, it does not handle the attainable causal hyperlink in between inactivity and excess weight gain.”  The research is an examination of a lengthy-phrase project by the Center for Ailment Handle and Prevention that “collects info from surveys and from bodily examinations.”

Study far more and you locate that even the researchers think that the diet regime figures could be misleading since, “participants may possibly have been tempted to beneath-report how considerably they ate.” That is the usual trope, but here’s yet another problem: It can be genuinely challenging to know how a lot of calories you are truly consuming. That smoothie advertised to be so healthful for your body and soul could be packed with calories. Identical with that salad, that granola bar, that fair-traded-organic-animal-free latte. Plus, except if you consciously add it up during the day, a numbers bias will get more than, because appetite and math do not perform well with each other.

My stage from both of these news objects is that tiny can impede positive modify a lot more than shame and confusion and America’s excess fat obsession is nearly nothing but people.

So why?

Late last 12 months an intriguing study covered by Pacific Standard Magazine might give us some insight. A group of women have been proven stigmatizing messages about obesity (or a control message) and then soon after discussing them have been led to a space with snacks. Most ate one thing, but ladies who saw themselves as overweight—whether they have been or not—ate more calories than people who had been proven a diverse message or, importantly, those who do not feel of themselves as overweight. My emphasis:

To their shock, they discovered that for ladies who do not consider of themselves as overweight, ‘exposure to a bodyweight-stigmatizing message appeared to boost their self-efficacy for controlling their diet plan.’”

It also sells magazines, gymnasium memberships, fat reduction strategies, “diet” food, drives Internet targeted traffic, helps make for fantastic actuality Television, and so on. Probably the only people who are not positively impacted by this fat obsession are people who see themselves as obese. All of this shaming and confusion generates a sense that it does not truly matter, a kind of insurance coverage towards which means, producing a moral hazard. If you’re in no way going to have an acceptable physique, why attempt at all? If scientists can not even agree, who understands what’s true?

It was not shaming or science that got me to modify my way of life. It was viewing the results of Type II Diabetes on the two of my mothers and fathers and moving to a city exactly where door-to-door driving was unattainable. I didn’t stick to a diet, per se. I tracked the nutrition of what I ate, everyday. I didn’t join a gym. I walked to operate and all over the place else.

America, we have this all incorrect.

Prince Fielder, Weight problems Studies And The Moral Hazard Of Unwanted fat Obsession

Thane Prince: "There"s something quiet and proper about jam-making"

Soon after the accomplishment of Prince’s programme and its forebear, The Great British Bake-Off, coupled with the rise of grow-your-own-ers and the beatification of all things WI, a single may feel that Britons minded to make their own chutneys, condiments and cordials would have got the hang of it by now.

Yet, jam-producing is one particular of the most rewarding locations in food publishing, echoing the latest boom – revenue of preserving paraphernalia such as jars, thermometers and jam funnels rose by two,000 per cent final 12 months. Even Prince, whose Ideal Preserves is out at the finish of the month (her 12th recipe assortment and her third about jam-producing), as soon as asked: “Who goes to bed with a cookbook about ketchup?”

Her coolly modern kitchen has four ovens, a dining table that simply seats twelve, shelves of Emma Bridgwater crockery and drawers that heave open to reveal a lifetime’s collection of utensils, including a prize possession: a stepped jam funnel picked up throughout a weekend in Prague with her husband of 41 years, Bob.

“People usually remark about the dimension of my kitchen,” says Prince, “but it is exactly where I work. If I was a whore, I’d have a massive bed.”

In Best Preserves, Thane explains in jolly, useful prose the subtle differences in between jams, jellies, butters, marmalades and chutneys. Preserving is not just for harvest festival time, she says, it’s a yr-round work. “It begins in the spring with marmalade – these oranges come in in February – and runs all the way through to December, when I make my cranberry vodka. There is always anything to be done. It’s about taking anything that is very good and producing some thing even more stunning with it. So forget your leftover strawberries, which are often rotten. And overlook gluts of courgette if you do not consume them although they are fresh, you’re not going to when they’re in a jar on the shelf, are you?”

As we speak, Prince desires to demonstrate me how to make a fundamental berry jam and a much more innovative gooseberry curd with elderflower (“perfect on scones, or folded into cream with meringue”). “With sugar, acid and pectin, you can set anything. The fruit is coincidental in jam. But a curd is, fundamentally, a set custard, a silky-soft luxury.”

She folds a thick white pinny close to her waist. “The apron is emotional rather than needed. I utilized to be a nurse, and I by no means truly feel happier than when I’m sporting one.”

And with that, we get to the heart of why we Britons adore jam-generating: it is about the nesting instinct. “There’s something about preserving that is quiet and appropriate. The place does a child really feel safest? It’s at granny’s residence, holding her hand and opening a door to a larder that’s full of lots. You are with somebody who’s going to safeguard you, with her existence if she demands to, and in front of you is cake, and ham and jam. And that’s how I come to feel about preserving.”

Prince suggestions a kilo bag of sugar on leading of a pan of macerating berries, in equal proportion of sugar to fruit, then hands me a wooden spoon. Given the growing concern about the amount of the granulated white stuff in our diet programs – final month, a government study revealed that we eat on average twice as significantly sugar a day as we ought to, and to stop soaring weight problems amounts we ought to reduce our advisable everyday consumption from six to five teaspoons – isn’t she anxious about what peddling preserves is performing to the nation’s waistlines?

“It’s all about portion manage,” she says. “There is no normal food that is bad for you. Extremely handful of food items are, apart from diet program and minimal-body fat meals, which replace excess fat material with sugar. And the far more we place visitors-light labelling on factors, the more we disable folks. You can operate a smartphone and can perform Globe of Warcraft to level 29, but you cannot understand that a banana is not going to have as many calories as a sweet fizzy drink? We say to folks you are as thick as —-.” She could be daintier than a doily, but can swear like a trucker.

Her personal svelteness is maintained with “a minor Photoshop on my book jackets” and, far more readily, by following an intermittent fasting diet. Earlier this yr, that other grandmother of foodie Television, Mary Berry, admitted that she had problems preserving her figure. “I eat enormously,” says Thane, “but I stick to the 5:2. I’ve been undertaking it for a 12 months, and it performs for me since I have this odd daily life. Final week, I ate twice at Fischer’s, had lunch at the River Cafe, I went to The Delaunay and The Palomar – all in a single week. With the five:2, you are not permanently ‘on a diet’, there are just a couple of days a week when you don’t consume. That’s significantly, much simpler to live with.”

Prince’s conviviality is a surprise, following her sometimes prickly visual appeal on The Massive Allotment Challenge, the new series she began filming in Oxfordshire last week. “I consider they showed my difficult bits. That is tv. You can only say what comes into your head. The contestants were all pretty, they all experimented with extremely difficult and had been all terrified of me. But a person has to be the Simon Cowell of the display. It was always going to be me.”

But then several of the contestants did get her dander up. “A lot them thickened their curds with cornflour. I’m sorry, that is just anathaema.”

If her gently whispered disapproval and best diction give her a slightly schoolmaamish demeanour, it’s created for delivering those neat lines of vague disappointment that made her turns on The Huge Allotment Challenge such a draw. Soon after a Norfolk upbringing in the 1950s, she worked for ten years as a ward sister at the former Middlesex Hospital in central London. “My maiden title was Miss Hurry and I was a bit bossy, so you can envision the jokes.”

She switched careers following marrying Bob, who was in undertaking finance, and starting a family. “In these days, you did not carry on hospital nursing when you had youngsters. It was tiring. I didn’t actually want to depart, but in those days, we used to operate 12-day shifts. And so I started out cooking for a deli, and then began creating about foods, and then it was just at the time off in the 1980s when tv cooking was beginning to get. I did cable Tv for a even though, then Ready, Steady, Cook – they were desperate as there have been fewer women chefs in people days – and it was fascinating. My daughter was at Exeter university at the time, and I would could walk through the campus and individuals would all turn and smile and say ‘Hi’.

“Fame was very addictive. The excellent side of it is lovely, the poor side is when you’re no longer renowned, which often happens. It’s element of the deal.”

This also brought a honest sum of hob-nobbing. “I was at a single of Jeffrey Archer’s shepherd’s pie and Krug events once, and was absolutely amazed. He had shelves and shelves and shelves of books… but they were all his books. I thought he’s possibly going to give them away as we left the celebration, but he did not.”

For the ideal portion of a decade, she was the Telegraph’s meals author ahead of moving to the Norfolk coast to open a cookery school in Aldeburgh. “It ran actually efficiently for ten many years. Then it just was time to shut it. We were too total, if that tends to make sense – booked up for a yr. It meant I couldn’t be spontaneous at all. I had to be there all the time.”

In Aldeburgh, she started to miss the city. “In a small town, it’s really simple to p— individuals off,” she says, enigmatically. For the past 10 years, she and Bob (“a sweetheart, head and shoulders above other men”) have lived in four-storey splendour following door to the equally amazing property where pop star Lily Allen and her younger brother, Game of Thrones star Alfie Allen, had been brought up. When I inquire how they were as neighbours, the grimace says it all.

Prince was fairly the tearabout herself as a kid. “I fell in a fire when I was small. I do not don’t forget it, but I have two massive burns on my forehead, which is why I’m always patting my fringe. All the pictures of me as a little one seem like I’ve received horns.”

Her very own daughters Jade and Amber (“we had been hoping to have a Garnet, for the total set of targeted traffic lights”) have lengthy flown the nest. One now lives in walking distance, although the other moved to Seattle a year ago with Prince’s grandchildren.

When she’s not writing books, judging others’ preserves or holding court at residence (“I like informal parties, but I really do not like occasions”), she volunteers each Tuesday at the Clinical Study Unit at University University Hospital. “I do the teas and coffee, and have a natter with the individuals. Nursing is the hardest issue I ever gave up. It is a extremely precious point that nurses do.”

Which, like ripe summer berries and heirloom tomatoes fresh from the vine, has to be worth preserving.

* Best Preserves: one hundred Scrumptious Methods to Protect Fruit and Greens, by Thane Prince (Hodder and Stoughton, £25), is obtainable from Telegraph Books at £22.50 + £1.95 P&ampP. To buy, call 0844 871 1514 or check out books.telegraph.co.united kingdom

Thane Prince’s gooseberry and elderflower curd

Substances

500g gooseberries

Five eggs

125g salted butter

100ml elderflower cordial

200g white caster sugar

Place the washed gooseberries in a pan above a low heat, with just the water that clings to them, cover and cook till the fruit softens and boils. Rub the mixture by means of a sieve into a round-bottomed pan. Lightly whisk the eggs until smooth, and include to the pan, along with the butter reduce into 1cm cubes, the elderflower cordial and sugar. Put the pan on a quite reduced heat and srit continuously with a wooden spoon, as however scrambling eggs. Cook right up until the sugar has fully dissolved and the butter melted. The mixture ought to not come to feel gritty when stirred, and there must be no signs of sugar on the back of your spoon. Flip the heat up a notch to reduced, stirring continuously, cook the curd till it is thick adequate to coat the back of the wooden spoon. Do not stop stirring or depart the pan do not let the mixture bubble. When the curd has thickened – remembering it will thicken far more as it cools – take the pan from the heat. Pot the curd into sterilised jars, using a jam funnel and a ladle. Cover with the lids and leave to awesome. When the jars are cold, label them and check out the lids are firmly screwed on. Keep in the fridge unopened, it keeps for up to 4 weeks.

Thane Prince: "There"s something quiet and proper about jam-making"

Celebrities At Wimbledon: Prince William, David Beckham, Pippa Middleton, And Other Stars Hold Court On Centre Court

The Wimbledon Championships have always brought celebrities, moguls and specifically royals to centre court to witness the splendor on the grass. But this year a galaxy of British stars came out to see if Andy Murray could repeat as men’s champion. (Alas, he misplaced in the quarterfinals.) But that did not end David Beckham, Richard Branson, Colin Firth, and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge from showing their really like of the sport. Although you have to feel undesirable for the fans who have been seated behind Shaquille O’Neal on opening day—and presumably had an obstructed see.

Celebrities At Wimbledon: Prince William, David Beckham, Pippa Middleton, And Other Stars Hold Court On Centre Court

Prince Philip tells household preparing clinic personnel: "At least you happen to be legitimate"

It is the third time in 45 years Prince Philip, famed for his playful sense of humour, has opened the sexual health centre, as it has moved house 3 occasions since its founding in 1969.

Claire Murdoch, chief executive of the Central North West London NHS Basis Trust which runs the centre, thanked the Prince for attending.

She mentioned: “It’s to be admired that your Royal Highness supported our function when it was a lot more controversial and ground-breaking.

“This tends to make your return these days all the a lot more impressive and appreciated.”

The centre, which is visited by about 750 people a week, gives family members planning advice and help as nicely as supplying gynaecological care at Holloway Prison and working with younger men and women, homeless women and intercourse workers.

Prince Philip tells household preparing clinic personnel: "At least you happen to be legitimate"

Sorry, Prince William, you know you are receiving old when...

_{Prince William in 2014 (Getty Images)}

Now that he has turn into a father, Prince William’s hair has commenced to recede quicker than a Eurozone economic climate. Sorry, Your Royal Highness, it seems that you’re obtaining previous.

Right here, then, are some much more telltale indicators that time is taking its toll on us men…

1. Going to bed early is not a punishment, but a blessed relief.

2. You are, quite sometimes, far more interested by infants than babes.

3. Someone famous dies and your immediate reaction is to subtract your age from theirs and realise, with a start off, that the difference is terrifyingly small. Or, even worse, that you are older.

4. You uncover that there is an inverse partnership among the quantity of hair on your head and the quantity of shampoos, conditioners, grooming gels, creams, bottles of Just For Males, restorative foams and anti-baldness tablets you possess. Soon, you will have a bathroom cabinet that puts Boots to shame and a scalp like Kojak’s even balder brother.

5. You get the reference to Kojak.

^{Kojak: “who loves ya, child?” (ALAMY)}

6. All people furious female Television presenters who are often protesting that they’re also old to get good jobs any a lot more, well, they don’t seem to be that old to you.

7. You are clearing out the garage – due to the fact that is the kind of thing you do these days – and you uncover a pile of old vinyl LPs. You haven’t played any of them in 20 many years, perhaps a lot more, but each and every sleeve brings back a memory.

_{Vinyl LP covers: a reminder of happier occasions (ALAMY)}

eight. You see a quite young issue swishing down the street on a sunny day and your heart still lights up as it always did. But the blood does not pound as challenging as a youthful man’s does. And then you realise that you are probably older than the fairly young thing’s father. Or, in some elements of the nation, her grandad.

9. It is not just that you’re older – much, much older… – than the footballers on Match of the Day. It’s that the managers have started out to seem to be youthful, as do the pundits and certainly the referees. Not that you see several of them, due to the fact you’ve dropped off less than halfway by way of the programme. Speaking of which …

10. Afternoon nap – the two best words in the lexicon.

11. You start off to consider a perverse pride in wearing previous garments. They are agreeably acquainted, and the tattier they get, the more cozy they grow to be. It is a incredible relief to give up buying practically totally. You start contemplating they’ll most likely see you out if you look after them very carefully. And what could offer a lot more satisfaction than being able to get into the jeans you bought when you were 35?

12. Squat on your haunches. Now stand. Just a number of twinges, are not there? Kneel down for far more than 30 seconds. Try out to get up. See what I suggest?

13. Although viewing Steve Coogan and Rob Bryden in The Trip to Italy, you hoot with laughter at Coogan’s spot-on impersonation of Neil Kinnock while your unsmiling teenage son asks: “Who’s Neil Kinnock?”

14. Pensions cease to be a topic of no curiosity whatever and become an overriding obsession. See also the iniquities of annuity costs, the rapacity of fund managers, the dubious potential of monetary advisers. And as for George Osborne’s pension reforms in the Spending budget, oh, be still my beating heart: what excitement!

15. Gardening – there is yet another issue that never ever used to be of any interest no matter what. But all of a sudden you uncover by yourself brooding in excess of slug repellents, leafing via seed, bulb and David Austin rose catalogues and, yes, becoming genuinely grateful for a actually great pair of gardening gloves at Christmas.

16. It is not that you invest Saturday evenings in, viewing all these Euro-cop demonstrates on BBC Four, laying off the Scandinavian murder mysteries and Belgian conspiracy thrillers just long enough to relish the intrigues of Danish coalition politics it is that you really believe you are rather fashionable as you’re doing it.

17. You employed to be reasonably hip, but now you have virtually no concept at all what the number one single could probably be. If you occur to hear it, your 1st reaction is to spot all the songs and artists you don’t forget from the old days from which it (like practically all contemporary hits) has been ripped off.

18. How can one be each shortsighted and longsighted at the exact same time? Reach middle-age, that is how. Out of the blue Tv dinners turn out to be a nightmare as you find out that you can both see the telly, or the foods on your plate. But not both, and suddenly…

19. You can hold your own in a discussion about varifocals. “Oh, do they function for you? Actually? I couldn’t get the hang of them at all, myself. They just created me come to feel woozy and strolling downstairs was a nightmare of vertigo. What? You have various prescription lenses in either eye? Remarkable, etc…”

^{One particular Path (I feel…) (GETTY Photographs)}

20. The baby that you as soon as held so nervously in your arms goes to school, and you include ‘nativity plays’ to the listing of sudden pleasures. Then you go to cello recitals and cheer at football games and battle to get your young children into the school you wished and you suffer through GCSEs and A-Levels, by way of fights with friends and first romances, by means of furious rows and slamming doors, through endless evenings spent ferrying them to events and back. Then suddenly they’re halfway round the globe, backpacking anyplace from Bolivia to Bangkok. And they are graduating, receiving jobs and by some means costing even much more than they ever did before. And you just cannot picture how the time could have gone by so rapidly.

Oh, and a single ultimate thing…

21. You know you left an additional sign of receiving previous somewhere safe, just in situation you needed it, but you just can not bear in mind in which…

Sorry, Prince William, you know you are receiving old when...

Sorry, Prince William, you know you"re receiving outdated when...

_{Prince William in 2014 (Getty Images)}

Now that he has become a father, Prince William’s hair has started to recede faster than a Eurozone economy. Sorry, Your Royal Highness, it seems that you’re getting old.

Here, then, are some more telltale signs that time is taking its toll on us men…

1. Going to bed early is not a punishment, but a blessed relief.

2. You are, very occasionally, more interested by babies than babes.

3. Someone famous dies and your immediate reaction is to subtract your age from theirs and realise, with a start, that the difference is terrifyingly small. Or, even worse, that you’re older.

4. You discover that there is an inverse relationship between the amount of hair on your head and the number of shampoos, conditioners, grooming gels, creams, bottles of Just For Men, restorative foams and anti-baldness pills you possess. Soon, you will have a bathroom cabinet that puts Boots to shame and a scalp like Kojak’s even balder brother.

5. You get the reference to Kojak.

^{Kojak: “who loves ya, baby?” (ALAMY)}

6. All those furious female TV presenters who are always protesting that they’re too old to get decent jobs any more, well, they don’t seem that old to you.

7. You’re clearing out the garage – because that’s the kind of thing you do these days – and you find a pile of old vinyl LPs. You haven’t played any of them in 20 years, maybe more, but every sleeve brings back a memory.

_{Vinyl LP covers: a reminder of happier times (ALAMY)}

8. You see a pretty young thing swishing down the street on a sunny day and your heart still lights up as it always did. But the blood doesn’t pound as hard as a young man’s does. And then you realise that you’re probably older than the pretty young thing’s father. Or, in some parts of the country, her grandad.

9. It’s not just that you’re older – much, much older… – than the footballers on Match of the Day. It’s that the managers have started to seem young, as do the pundits and certainly the referees. Not that you see many of them, because you’ve dropped off less than halfway through the programme. Speaking of which …

10. Afternoon nap – the two finest words in the lexicon.

11. You start to take a perverse pride in wearing old clothes. They’re agreeably familiar, and the tattier they get, the more comfortable they become. It’s a tremendous relief to give up shopping almost entirely. You start thinking they’ll probably see you out if you look after them carefully. And what could provide more satisfaction than being able to get into the jeans you bought when you were 35?

12. Squat on your haunches. Now stand. Just a few twinges, aren’t there? Kneel down for more than 30 seconds. Try to get up. See what I mean?

13. While watching Steve Coogan and Rob Bryden in The Trip to Italy, you hoot with laughter at Coogan’s spot-on impersonation of Neil Kinnock while your unsmiling teenage son asks: “Who’s Neil Kinnock?”

14. Pensions cease to be a subject of no interest whatever and become an overriding obsession. See also the iniquities of annuity rates, the rapacity of fund managers, the dubious ability of financial advisers. And as for George Osborne’s pension reforms in the Budget, oh, be still my beating heart: what excitement!

15. Gardening – there’s another thing that never used to be of any interest whatever. But suddenly you find yourself brooding over slug repellents, leafing through seed, bulb and David Austin rose catalogues and, yes, being genuinely grateful for a really good pair of gardening gloves at Christmas.

16. It’s not that you spend Saturday evenings in, watching all those Euro-cop shows on BBC Four, laying off the Scandinavian murder mysteries and Belgian conspiracy thrillers just long enough to relish the intrigues of Danish coalition politics; it’s that you actually think you’re rather trendy as you’re doing it.

17. You used to be reasonably hip, but now you have literally no idea at all what the number one single could possibly be. If you happen to hear it, your first reaction is to spot all the songs and artists you remember from the old days from which it (like virtually all contemporary hits) has been ripped off.

18. How can one be both shortsighted and longsighted at the same time? Reach middle-age, that’s how. Suddenly TV dinners become a nightmare as you discover that you can either see the telly, or the food on your plate. But not both, and suddenly…

19. You can hold your own in a discussion about varifocals. “Oh, do they work for you? Really? I couldn’t the hang of them at all, myself. They just made me feel woozy and walking downstairs was a nightmare of vertigo. What? You have different prescription lenses in either eye? Amazing, etc…”

^{One Direction (I think…) (GETTY IMAGES)}

20. The baby that you once held so nervously in your arms goes to school, and you add ‘nativity plays’ to the list of unexpected pleasures. Then you go to cello recitals and cheer at football games; and fight to get your children into the school you wanted; and you suffer through GCSEs and A-Levels, through fights with friends and first romances, through furious rows and slamming doors, through endless evenings spent ferrying them to parties and back. Then suddenly they’re halfway round the world, backpacking anywhere from Bolivia to Bangkok. And they’re graduating, getting jobs and somehow costing even more than they ever did before. And you simply can’t imagine how the time could have gone by so fast.

Oh, and one final thing…

21. You know you left another sign of getting old somewhere safe, just in case you needed it, but you simply can’t remember where…

Sorry, Prince William, you know you"re receiving outdated when...

Sorry, Prince William, you know you are acquiring previous when...

_{Prince William in 2014 (Getty Images)}

Now that he has become a father, Prince William’s hair has started to recede faster than a Eurozone economy. Sorry, Your Royal Highness, it seems that you’re getting old.

Here, then, are some more telltale signs that time is taking its toll on us men…

1. Going to bed early is not a punishment, but a blessed relief.

2. You are, very occasionally, more interested by babies than babes.

3. Someone famous dies and your immediate reaction is to subtract your age from theirs and realise, with a start, that the difference is terrifyingly small. Or, even worse, that you’re older.

4. You discover that there is an inverse relationship between the amount of hair on your head and the number of shampoos, conditioners, grooming gels, creams, bottles of Just For Men, restorative foams and anti-baldness pills you possess. Soon, you will have a bathroom cabinet that puts Boots to shame and a scalp like Kojak’s even balder brother.

5. You get the reference to Kojak.

^{Kojak: “who loves ya, baby?” (ALAMY)}

6. All those furious female TV presenters who are always protesting that they’re too old to get decent jobs any more, well, they don’t seem that old to you.

7. You’re clearing out the garage – because that’s the kind of thing you do these days – and you find a pile of old vinyl LPs. You haven’t played any of them in 20 years, maybe more, but every sleeve brings back a memory.

_{Vinyl LP covers: a reminder of happier times (ALAMY)}

8. You see a pretty young thing swishing down the street on a sunny day and your heart still lights up as it always did. But the blood doesn’t pound as hard as a young man’s does. And then you realise that you’re probably older than the pretty young thing’s father. Or, in some parts of the country, her grandad.

9. It’s not just that you’re older – much, much older… – than the footballers on Match of the Day. It’s that the managers have started to seem young, as do the pundits and certainly the referees. Not that you see many of them, because you’ve dropped off less than halfway through the programme. Speaking of which …

10. Afternoon nap – the two finest words in the lexicon.

11. You start to take a perverse pride in wearing old clothes. They’re agreeably familiar, and the tattier they get, the more comfortable they become. It’s a tremendous relief to give up shopping almost entirely. You start thinking they’ll probably see you out if you look after them carefully. And what could provide more satisfaction than being able to get into the jeans you bought when you were 35?

12. Squat on your haunches. Now stand. Just a few twinges, aren’t there? Kneel down for more than 30 seconds. Try to get up. See what I mean?

13. While watching Steve Coogan and Rob Bryden in The Trip to Italy, you hoot with laughter at Coogan’s spot-on impersonation of Neil Kinnock while your unsmiling teenage son asks: “Who’s Neil Kinnock?”

14. Pensions cease to be a subject of no interest whatever and become an overriding obsession. See also the iniquities of annuity rates, the rapacity of fund managers, the dubious ability of financial advisers. And as for George Osborne’s pension reforms in the Budget, oh, be still my beating heart: what excitement!

15. Gardening – there’s another thing that never used to be of any interest whatever. But suddenly you find yourself brooding over slug repellents, leafing through seed, bulb and David Austin rose catalogues and, yes, being genuinely grateful for a really good pair of gardening gloves at Christmas.

16. It’s not that you spend Saturday evenings in, watching all those Euro-cop shows on BBC Four, laying off the Scandinavian murder mysteries and Belgian conspiracy thrillers just long enough to relish the intrigues of Danish coalition politics; it’s that you actually think you’re rather trendy as you’re doing it.

17. You used to be reasonably hip, but now you have literally no idea at all what the number one single could possibly be. If you happen to hear it, your first reaction is to spot all the songs and artists you remember from the old days from which it (like virtually all contemporary hits) has been ripped off.

18. How can one be both shortsighted and longsighted at the same time? Reach middle-age, that’s how. Suddenly TV dinners become a nightmare as you discover that you can either see the telly, or the food on your plate. But not both, and suddenly…

19. You can hold your own in a discussion about varifocals. “Oh, do they work for you? Really? I couldn’t the hang of them at all, myself. They just made me feel woozy and walking downstairs was a nightmare of vertigo. What? You have different prescription lenses in either eye? Amazing, etc…”

^{One Direction (I think…) (GETTY IMAGES)}

20. The baby that you once held so nervously in your arms goes to school, and you add ‘nativity plays’ to the list of unexpected pleasures. Then you go to cello recitals and cheer at football games; and fight to get your children into the school you wanted; and you suffer through GCSEs and A-Levels, through fights with friends and first romances, through furious rows and slamming doors, through endless evenings spent ferrying them to parties and back. Then suddenly they’re halfway round the world, backpacking anywhere from Bolivia to Bangkok. And they’re graduating, getting jobs and somehow costing even more than they ever did before. And you simply can’t imagine how the time could have gone by so fast.

Oh, and one final thing…

21. You know you left another sign of getting old somewhere safe, just in case you needed it, but you simply can’t remember where…

Sorry, Prince William, you know you are acquiring previous when...

Sorry, Prince William, you know you happen to be receiving outdated when...

_{Prince William in 2014 (Getty Images)}

Now that he has become a father, Prince William’s hair has started to recede faster than a Eurozone economy. Sorry, Your Royal Highness, it seems that you’re getting old.

Here, then, are some more telltale signs that time is taking its toll on us men…

1. Going to bed early is not a punishment, but a blessed relief.

2. You are, very occasionally, more interested by babies than babes.

3. Someone famous dies and your immediate reaction is to subtract your age from theirs and realise, with a start, that the difference is terrifyingly small. Or, even worse, that you’re older.

4. You discover that there is an inverse relationship between the amount of hair on your head and the number of shampoos, conditioners, grooming gels, creams, bottles of Just For Men, restorative foams and anti-baldness pills you possess. Soon, you will have a bathroom cabinet that puts Boots to shame and a scalp like Kojak’s even balder brother.

5. You get the reference to Kojak.

^{Kojak: “who loves ya, baby?” (ALAMY)}

6. All those furious female TV presenters who are always protesting that they’re too old to get decent jobs any more, well, they don’t seem that old to you.

7. You’re clearing out the garage – because that’s the kind of thing you do these days – and you find a pile of old vinyl LPs. You haven’t played any of them in 20 years, maybe more, but every sleeve brings back a memory.

_{Vinyl LP covers: a reminder of happier times (ALAMY)}

8. You see a pretty young thing swishing down the street on a sunny day and your heart still lights up as it always did. But the blood doesn’t pound as hard as a young man’s does. And then you realise that you’re probably older than the pretty young thing’s father. Or, in some parts of the country, her grandad.

9. It’s not just that you’re older – much, much older… – than the footballers on Match of the Day. It’s that the managers have started to seem young, as do the pundits and certainly the referees. Not that you see many of them, because you’ve dropped off less than halfway through the programme. Speaking of which …

10. Afternoon nap – the two finest words in the lexicon.

11. You start to take a perverse pride in wearing old clothes. They’re agreeably familiar, and the tattier they get, the more comfortable they become. It’s a tremendous relief to give up shopping almost entirely. You start thinking they’ll probably see you out if you look after them carefully. And what could provide more satisfaction than being able to get into the jeans you bought when you were 35?

12. Squat on your haunches. Now stand. Just a few twinges, aren’t there? Kneel down for more than 30 seconds. Try to get up. See what I mean?

13. While watching Steve Coogan and Rob Bryden in The Trip to Italy, you hoot with laughter at Coogan’s spot-on impersonation of Neil Kinnock while your unsmiling teenage son asks: “Who’s Neil Kinnock?”

14. Pensions cease to be a subject of no interest whatever and become an overriding obsession. See also the iniquities of annuity rates, the rapacity of fund managers, the dubious ability of financial advisers. And as for George Osborne’s pension reforms in the Budget, oh, be still my beating heart: what excitement!

15. Gardening – there’s another thing that never used to be of any interest whatever. But suddenly you find yourself brooding over slug repellents, leafing through seed, bulb and David Austin rose catalogues and, yes, being genuinely grateful for a really good pair of gardening gloves at Christmas.

16. It’s not that you spend Saturday evenings in, watching all those Euro-cop shows on BBC Four, laying off the Scandinavian murder mysteries and Belgian conspiracy thrillers just long enough to relish the intrigues of Danish coalition politics; it’s that you actually think you’re rather trendy as you’re doing it.

17. You used to be reasonably hip, but now you have literally no idea at all what the number one single could possibly be. If you happen to hear it, your first reaction is to spot all the songs and artists you remember from the old days from which it (like virtually all contemporary hits) has been ripped off.

18. How can one be both shortsighted and longsighted at the same time? Reach middle-age, that’s how. Suddenly TV dinners become a nightmare as you discover that you can either see the telly, or the food on your plate. But not both, and suddenly…

19. You can hold your own in a discussion about varifocals. “Oh, do they work for you? Really? I couldn’t the hang of them at all, myself. They just made me feel woozy and walking downstairs was a nightmare of vertigo. What? You have different prescription lenses in either eye? Amazing, etc…”

^{One Direction (I think…) (GETTY IMAGES)}

20. The baby that you once held so nervously in your arms goes to school, and you add ‘nativity plays’ to the list of unexpected pleasures. Then you go to cello recitals and cheer at football games; and fight to get your children into the school you wanted; and you suffer through GCSEs and A-Levels, through fights with friends and first romances, through furious rows and slamming doors, through endless evenings spent ferrying them to parties and back. Then suddenly they’re halfway round the world, backpacking anywhere from Bolivia to Bangkok. And they’re graduating, getting jobs and somehow costing even more than they ever did before. And you simply can’t imagine how the time could have gone by so fast.

Oh, and one final thing…

21. You know you left another sign of getting old somewhere safe, just in case you needed it, but you simply can’t remember where…

Sorry, Prince William, you know you happen to be receiving outdated when...

Prince Charles: very good food in hospitals must be a priority

He highlighted the just lately introduced Hospital Meals Exemplar CQUIN (Commissioning for Top quality and Innovation), which permits commissioners to reward hospital trusts for delivering higher top quality meals.

In a speech Charles mentioned it was important to “see food as a medication in itself”, in accordance to the Daily Mail.

He added: “You can envision just how delighted I was that final month NHS England launched an initiative CQUIN, which for the 1st time really encouraged commissioners to make hospital foods a clinical priority.”

He described Mike Duckett, former catering manager at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London, as an “inspiration”.

Mr Duckett reopened a amount of shutdown hospital kitchens and set them up with an natural chef and back links to neighborhood farmers in Kent who have been in a position to supply them with fresh seasonal make.

Charles mentioned this variety of enterprise developed a “virtuous circle” of sustainability, assisting the neighborhood economy and making certain better patient health.

Prince Charles: very good food in hospitals must be a priority