Healthy Living by Kirstie_McIntosh

Now, this will be a clean one, nothing lewd, rude, or below-the-bar I promise. You see, I must be on my best behaviour, I only have a few more days to be a very good girl, otherwise the big man in red is going to leave nothing in my stocking. Well, maybe a couple of nuts and a Toblerone if I am lucky.

And talking of St. Nic himself brings me nicely on to the subject of today's post. I read this morning that the cheery rotund character we know and love is actually bad for our health. Yup, apparently the ample figure of Father Christmas is 'a public health hazard - promoting obesity and drink-driving'.

Well so Dr Grills, a public health fellow at Monash University, Australia, suggests. You see, Grill has studied the negative impact of Santa's image on public health in literature and on the web and he found Santa awareness was sky-high among children, especially in the US, where he is second only to Ronald McDonald. Well, that's blinking obvious isn't it? Of course Santa awareness is high amongst children, he brings them a massive pile of presents every year, rides in a super-fast sleigh, pulled by magic reindeer that enables him to visit everyone in the world in just one night. And that the fact that he eats mince pies and drinks brandy will cause children to aspire to follow suit, I don't  think so.

Okay, so I get the fact that consuming even just one mince pie per household is going to pile on the calories for him, but hell - he's got to visit everywhere in the world, get down the chimney and out again, surely that's a big fat workout in itself? And, Dr. Grills drink driving point that the fact that Santa is 'drink-driving'.  I mean, this is completely ridiculous; surely everyone knows that Rudolph pulls the sleigh?

Get with it Grill - you'll end up with a sachet of Slimfast and a gastric band in your stocking this Christmas. This is not how Santa should be, he got no hair on his chest for starters, and where the hell is his sack?