Dear Mr Tong,

The readers of my blog know me as a 300 year old ghost - a sarcastic, snarky, tweeting and blogging ghost.  I am in reality, however, alive.  I live, as you do, in London.  I have a teenage son.  He’s alive too.  He’s healthy and strong and well-adjusted.  I also have a teenage daughter. She is alive, now, after being resuscitated twice during surgery to remove part of her damaged stomach.  Just over two years ago, she started skipping lunch at school, and within six months she was admitted to the hospital where she has pretty much remained since.  She has a team of 16 doctors and nurses around her 24 hours a day – they are unable to “manage” her anorexia, in fact she hasn’t eaten at all since June of last year and is force-fed, daily, through a tube.  She was never fat, or even remotely overweight.  She was slim and beautiful, and vulnerable.  Vulnerable to the ideal of what you are selling, as are many other people: some fat, some already thin, some just unhappy.  Lots of them, Mr Tong, will not be able to cope with managing the accelerated weight loss that comes from the not-eating that you recommend.  It’s not a diet pill that you are selling, it’s actually anorexia. The pills, of course, are just nonsense.

Lots of unprincipled people have sold diet pills over the years: it’s a huge industry generating vast profits from vulnerable, targeted people.  Companies such as Weightwatchers are not a charity, they’re a business. They don’t seem to take to their work though, with quite as much vitriol or unashamed irresponsibility as you do.  I’m pretty sure if they advertised their products in the way that your tweets seem to suggest that you might, they would be fined, or prosecuted.   They would certainly be stopped from doing so, as I am sure that you will be once awareness of your dangerous sales propaganda grows and someone steps in.

In the meantime, the discussion surrounding your misguided comments is very unhelpful.  Everyone is, and in particular teenage girls are, at risk of developing an eating disorder.  There are those who are not affected by exposure to potential triggers, and those who are.  We are all surrounded by fashion advertising, lifestyle aspirations and all exposed to the Size Zero debate.  We do not all become anorexic.  I believe my daughter would have been anorexic no matter what – she suffers from a combination of factors that may even be proven to be genetic, once the hundreds of scientists engaged in studying this disease make some progress in identifying the reasons for it.  I don't know what triggered my daughter's illness, no-one does, and this is where you present a danger to the public.  The only thing anyone exposed to the illness can say for sure about your position, is that the reality of living with anorexia is not as you present it.  Glamorising anorexia is bad enough, but glamorising it through financially motivated invention and outright lies is pretty despicable.

Skipping meals leads to fairly instant weight loss, which you acknowledge is unhealthy, but say is “worth it”.  At this point there are those who will find hunger unbearable, and those who find the weight loss seductive enough to continue.  They have a very short period of time, if they pursue not-eating, before their state of mind becomes affected.  Many will exercise obsessively, a combination that places all major organs under often intolerable strain as the body's weight and resources decrease.  At this stage it is very difficult for the anorexic to stop, and below a certain weight they will be taken in to medical care, either voluntarily, but often having to be sectioned under the Mental Health Act as they present an unacceptable danger to themselves.  It goes without saying that the lives of everyone around the anorexic are completely ruined whilst this process, and either their slow recovery, or death, takes place. The disease manages the sufferer, Mr Tong, not the other way round. It’s not “worth it”, as you so flippantly suggest.  “Managed anorexia” cannot possibly exist. If teams of qualified medical staff cannot manage it, how do you suppose a single, vulnerable person can?  I ask you to acknowledge this, and to modify your sales pitch.  By all means, sell your diet pills, but have some consideration for a disease that you have dangerously misunderstood in your search for a catchy strap-line. 

But then I’m sure my words are wasted on you.  You wouldn’t have said some of the things that you have if your moral outlook was any different to that of a drug dealer, an arms dealer, a loan shark or a human trafficker.  You would like to earn more money at any price, without conscience.  I lost count of the number of times that you had to remind everyone in your twitter profile and twitter feed that you are “rich”.  That’s a fairly flamboyant display of insecurity Mr Tong – what are you over-compensating for?  What are you hiding?  I am afraid that I missed your moment of fame, your brief appearance in series 10 of Big Brother, as did the vast majority of the population.  I understand though, that you had to leave following an episode in which you used language that "could be perceived as threatening" when, after an argument with another contestant, you said you would "pay someone to deal with it".  Mr Tong, to put it mildly, you don’t seem to be a very nice person, and I think that Twitter and Facebook would be better places without you there.

This letter is therefore addressed to everyone else who reads it.  If you are in any way angered by Mr Tong and his disregard for the lives and safety of vulnerable people and their families, then please take one minute to report him.

This may well be the only time I shall be happy to see anyone’s feed stopped.

Regards &c.

A Father.