Dieters struggling to change their food habits may now be able to say "so long" to extreme measures like cabbage soup and electro-shock therapy. New research shows efforts directed at eliminating types of food may be focused on the wrong target. Yesterday a Wall Street Journal columnist suggested that "what" you eat does not matter as much as "how":

There's a lot of evidence that simply changing your habits and attention level while eating can make a difference in the quantity of food you ingest. In the new book "Mindless Eating," researcher Brian Wansink, director of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab in Ithaca, N.Y., argues that external factors -- such as family habits, food packaging, distractions and even the location of food on the table -- often influence eating habits more than hunger.

The Fatty Issue

WE'VE had the Atkins diet, the blood group diet, the cabbage soup diet, and now the liposuction "diet". As any woman will tell you, when it comes to losing weight, a "by-any-means-necessary" approach is not uncommon. However, those "means" included a painful surgical procedure at a cost of £3,000 for around 4,000 Brits who had liposuction treatments last year, most of whom were women.