'Miracle diets' feed false promises to weight-watchers

Breakfast time in our house was, until quite recently, a chore for me. My wife, Ellen, had taken to eating bowl after bowl of mung bean soup, and it was my job to buy and cook them.

The other day, when I was at the market, I thought my luck had changed. Mung beans had dropped to almost half the price, so I bought more than usual, thus I wouldn't have to make another trip for a while.

You can't imagine my surprise when, after I got home, Ellen declared that she never wanted to see another bowl of mung bean soup again!

It seems that she'd been the victim of Zhang Wuben, and his book Eat Away The Illnesses Eaten In. His cure-all prescription, offered for a hefty sum, invariably comprised mung beans, calcium pills, raw aubergines, bitter melon, white radish, Chinese yam and corn.

Among his outlandish claims, he said that drinking 500 grams of mung bean soup daily helped one get rid of short sight, diabetes, high blood pressure and tumors. He recommended a daily intake of 4,000 milligrams for men and 3,000 milligrams for women to lower blood pressure.

If you haven't been keeping up with the news, Zhang has been revealed to be a fake - or as Ellen put it, shanzhai, a term that originally meant "mountain village", and now covers fakes.

In China, it's hard to avoid fake things - from DVDs to watches, perfume to clothes, they're available almost everywhere you look.

I must admit that without fake DVDs, I'd probably have gone stark raving mad by now. The alternative - endless hours of CCTV 9 - isn't one that I'm that keen on. The DVDs at least give me a chance to see what's happening in cinemas elsewhere.

This makes me feel sorry for the film studios, actors and artists involved, who miss out on the rewards of their labor. Fake products can even reduce the perception of the real item, as the market is flooded with poor quality copies.

Which is pretty much the case with Zhang.

The discovery of his forged credentials has led to people like Ellen losing their faith in doctors, a faith that is not easily restored. I think it'll be a while before she buys another diet book, or listens to another talking head in the media.

It's hard for me to understand how someone like Zhang could become so popular so quickly - or how his theories could gain such a hold, without them being subjected to peer review.

Perhaps we're all looking for a magic cure, and just latch onto whatever the latest craze is to sweep across the TV and newspapers. Whatever it is, we need to remember that if something sounds too good to be true, it often is - after all, "miracle diets" are hardly new, yet if they all worked, we'd never have to worry about watching our weight ever again.

And watching my weight is important to me. Since my column a few weeks ago, I've lost enough weight to fit into T-shirts and trousers that I'd almost given up hope on wearing ever again. I've also inspired Ellen into also getting rid of her "spare tire".

So now we're both trying to lose weight, and, having given up the mung beans, Ellen's become more interested in trying low fat styles of cooking. There is definitely a place in Ellen's diet for traditional Chinese medicine, and I've been doing a fair bit of homework about it - but only from reputable sources.

And I never want to see another mung bean again!