A MENTAL health advocate has warned that a government plan to add calorie counts to menus is “soulless” and “lacking in compassion.”

Izzy Bros, 24, says that including calorie details on menus will be “more detrimental than it could ever be positive” for people who are suffering, or have recovered, from an eating disorder.

As part of the Queen’s Speech earlier this month, the government announced plans for restaurants, cafes and pubs with more than 250 employees to put calorie details on their menus.

The Argus: Izzy, who lives in Hove, was diagnosed with an eating disorder at 13Izzy, who lives in Hove, was diagnosed with an eating disorder at 13

The move is aimed at encouraging Britons to eat healthier food and to drive down rates of obesity.

But Izzy, who lives in the Brunswick area of Hove, believes the move could cause younger people to take up the habit of calorie counting and “slip” into disordered eating.

She told The Argus: “There’s a really big misconception that people who are anorexic can’t be in plus size bodies.

The Argus: Izzy is now a mental health advocate Izzy is now a mental health advocate

“Eating disorders are completely mental and often the restriction can lead to periods of overeating and binging and that repeated cycle on the body can cause weight gain.

“So, the compassion we can have for people with restrictive eating disorders that make them very, very underweight should also be applied to people with bigger bodies.

“There’s a link between mental health problems and people becoming overweight or obese.

 

“There’s also a massive link between childhood trauma, assault, sexual assault and then going on to become overweight.

“We have to start applying compassion rather than just a blanket rule that everyone should start counting calories and trying to diet to lose weight because it’s soulless.

"This tactic that the government has put forward just completely lacks compassion."

 

Eating Disorder charity Beat carried out a survey of 1,118 people with an existing or past eating disorder, or those caring for them, and found that 93 per cent felt the move would have a negative or very negative impact on them.

Some 89 per cent of those polled by Beat said they did not support the introduction of mandatory calorie labelling.

Izzy, a student at the University of Sussex, was diagnosed with an eating disorder at the age of 13.

She said that her recovery is an “ongoing process” and while she is confident that the inclusion of calories on menus would not cause her to “spiral”, she has acknowledged it could be a potential trigger.

She said: “It’s taken me years and years and years to unlearn the calories in everything I eat. I could literally guestimate the calories to the nearest ten because I had spent so long counting calories to the nearest decimal.

“After years of unlearning it’s just a massive slap in the face for it to literally be in my face every time I want to go out and eat with my friends.

“I’m fairly confident that the calories on menus aren’t going to send me back into the pits of an eating disorder, but equally it could.”

Beat has launched a new campaign asking members of the public to write to their MP to voice concerns, with more than 4,000 people taking part so far.