✤ The Lancet's report on diabetes, released last week, provided some shocking figures – that there are 347 million diabetics worldwide, for instance, and that this is double the number there were in 1980. But the most striking statistics showed the sharp rise in diabetes among women – from 7.5% in 2009 to 9.2% today. While researchers attributed 70% of this to ageing, they believed that 30% was due to factors such as obesity and body mass. Lest we forget, 25% of adult women in the UK are now obese.

Strangely, I saw these figures shortly after reading an article in US Marie Claire about eating disorders, which affect more than 1.1 million people in the UK, with girls and women 10 times more likely to suffer than boys and men.

The combined effect of these two reports made me despair. Our attitudes to diet and exercise have become so mangled it's difficult to know how we might ever repair them; yes, we have high-powered conferences about skinny fashion models and campaigns for "real women", but what exactly is a "real woman" today? Overweight? Ever-dieting? One eye on Vogue, and afraid of the biscuit tin? We have a responsibility to ourselves, to each other and to our daughters, to sort out our ridiculous relationship with food and with our bodies – it's harmful, and it's boring, and life is too short.

✤ And there's more. Researchers at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, surveyed 12 international studies to conclude that over-eating during pregnancy can harm your unborn child. Please, don't breathe a word of this to the Americans; if recent cases in the US are anything to go by, eating too many HobNobs will only become one more reason to prosecute pregnant women.

✤ We've been deeply disturbed by the recent online resuscitation of Jaye P Morgan's 1987 show Cooking With Beefcake. For starters, we'd surely wince if those scantily clad kitchen-hands were female, and second, are you sure that's really hygienic, Jaye?

Naked sous-chef? Diabetic researcher? Let us know below.