Latest news with #clean eating
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Daily Mail
I thought my 'vegan' sister had stopped posting her toddler on social media for privacy... really he was dead she and her 'religious' husband had buried him in their garden - this is my one regret
The sister of a vegan mother whose obsession with 'clean eating' led to the death of her severely malnourished toddler has revealed her lasting regret. When Naiyahmi Yasharahyalah, 43, first met her husband Tai, 42, he was 'really polite' and 'normal', but their relationship would soon spiral out of control with the pair eventually ostracising themselves from society to start their own 'kingdom'. The couple, who were said to be members of an 'obscure religious movement' known as the Royal Ahayah's Witness, lived in squalor. They survived on only fruit, nuts, and seeds and followed their own religion and laws. In the process, they wilfully neglected their three-year-old toddler, Abiyah, by prioritising their 'distorted system beliefs' over his welfare, and failing to provide him with enough food and necessary medical attention. The child died from a a respiratory illness in January 2020, worsened by a 'restricted' vegan diet which caused severe malnutrition, rickets, anaemia and stunted growth. In the wake of his death, the couple kept him in their bed for eight days in the hope he would be reincarnated, before burying him in the garden of their former home in Handsworth, Birmingham. It wouldn't be until almost three years later that his remains would be found by police conducting a welfare check on the couple. In December 2022, the former fitness instructor and medical genetics graduate were arrested while living in a caravan in Somerset, and later sentenced to a total of 44 years behind bars. Now Naiyahmi's sister, Cassie Rowe, 47, tragically revealed she became concerned about her 'lovely' nephew when her sibling, with whom she was estranged, stopped posting the tot on social media. 'I did notice that she'd stopped posting Abiyah on social media, but I just assumed that it was to do with not wanting [him] on social media anymore,' Cassie told the Daily Mail. However, despite attempting to rationalise her worries, she did discuss her concerns with her mother, who she suggested should reach out to Naiyahmi. Cassie, who is now raising money through GoFundMe to give her nephew the send off he deserves, says she didn't want to contact her sister, or be 'dragged in' to her sister's turbulent relationship once again. She said she had having previously attempted to help her sister raise Abiyah as a single mother - which she says was a difficult time. 'I'm very empathetic and I [would] just get dragged back in, and I didn't want to. I was dealing with my own health issues at the time. 'I just think my sister had messed us about so many times, everybody was just kind of fed up with her at this point and nobody wanted to get involved.' 'Obviously, had we known this was gonna happen... it's just something that you don't expect to ever happen.' In 2021, around the same time, Cassie had also posted of her own health woes to which her sister responded. But by this point, unbeknownst to Cassie, her family, as well as officials, Abiyah was already dead. 'She was asking me about my health issues and I was just saying to her that I was fine, I was seeing the doctors and that I had been given medication. 'She started telling me that she was going through some health issues and it was some spiritual thing, but that was after Abiyah had died. 'I didn't know when she reached out to me. 'I've looked back through all through like my communication with her and I'm like, but, she'd spoken to me after he died and she said nothing.' However, when reflecting on the series of events that lead up to her nephew's death, there was also another regret plaguing her mind in the midst of her grief. After Abiyah was born, Naiyahmi had been living with her family for around a year, as her marriage became strained. The couple rekindled their relationship at Abiyah's first birthday - an invitation Cassie continues to regret being extended. 'We had Abiya's first birthday party and after that, that's when it all went down him again because I'd let her invite his dad to the birthday party,' she said. 'I was trying to do the right thing.' When the Yasharahyalahs initially began dating at the beginning of 2015, Naiyahmi had been a devout Christian for some time, and Taj, according to Cassie, seemed 'very polite' and 'normal'. But Naiyahmi's family quickly became concerned when they began to see Facebook posts from the pair announcing they were a part of another 'niche religious group'. And within months of meeting her soon-to-be husband, Naiyahmi became estranged from her family. 'We started seeing posts on, on social media where they were denouncing the Western world, and they didn't agree with interracial relationships,' Cassie said. 'I think that's what caused the problem with us as a family because we're quite diverse. 'We've all got mixed race children, so it was a bit of a shock, and we didn't attend the wedding.' 'Obviously, I was concerned because this is my sister and we tried to intervene, but she just kind of pushed us all away. 'She was just like, "No, I'm marrying him and that's it".' 2022: The couple were arrested on 9 December 2022 while living in a caravan in Glastonbury and Abiyah was finally found five days later Speaking of her sister's personality, Cassie added: 'She's always been a bit different. 'I've seen her in relationships where she's completely changed her whole personality. So for me it wasn't, it wasn't anything new. 'To see her following somebody else I was like, "Oh, there, there she goes again," - but I didn't expect it to go as far as it did.' Reflecting on Naiyahmi relationship with her husband, she said: 'I know why she was doing it. He made her feel special and that's what she always looked for. 'He was heavily into being proud to be black, and being proud of African heritage, and so, I think that made her feel beautiful as well.' In 2016, Naiyahmi arrived at her family's doorstep heavily pregnant and 'shockingly thin' to the point of malnutrition. She told her family her husband had sent her home due to a falling out, and because he had 'some of his god's work to do' 'I was angry at him and I was angry at her as well because I've children and I do everything to make sure they're healthy and they're safe. 'I kind of had a go at her a little bit. I was like, "I know they are your beliefs, but they have I got you into this position". 'And she was just reciting scriptures and things. It was almost like she was there but not there. 'She was just smiling at me and I'm thinking, "Where is my sister gone this isn't my sister".' Following Abiyah's birth Naiyahmi stayed with family for around a year, and in that time spent half a year with Cassie, who supported her as a single mother. Speaking of her sister's time back with the family, she said: 'She was a doting mother, I'd even say that she was overprotective. 'She was still vegan, but they were eating a good diet and she's started wearing makeup again she took her headscarf off. 'She was going to playgroups, she'd come out with me and my friends. She never left [Abiyah] with anybody.' Despite her progress, Naiyahmi eventually rekindled her relationship with her husband after Abiyah's first birthday. In turn, Cassie's and her sister's relationship began to become 'strained' while they lived together. And, without much announcement, Naiyahmi moved out of her sister's home to the property in Handsworth, where three-year-old Abiyah would eventually be buried. From then on, Naiyahmi had cut off her family, and had not been in touch with her sister beyond one message out of the blue concerning health troubles. The next time Cassie would be informed about her sister would be in relation to Abiyah's remains being discovered in 2022. She was the first in the family to be told by police about her nephew's death. 'I don't think it really sank in straight away,' she said. 'The family were all trying to figure out what had happened, and it was difficult 'We fell out as a family because some people were sympathising and there was others who were just like, "No she's done wrong". 'So, it's been very difficult to to navigate because how do you navigate something like this - that's happened to a family member by another family member.' Now, the family are trying to raise funds via GoFundMe so little Abiyah can have a headstone, so they have 'something that lasts' to remember him by, and a place to mourn. 'He was a very timid, and just a lovely child. I just want something that reflects who he was in the short time that he was on this earth,' Cassie said.
Yahoo
02-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Jessica Biel Revealed The Fast Food She Doesn't Let Her Kids Eat, And It's A Hot Take
Jessica Biel is all about eating "clean" — so of course, that means some restaurants are naturally off-limits. In an interview with Parade, Jessica said that for her family — which includes sons Silas, 10, and Phineas, 4, with husband Justin Timberlake — one of those places is iconic restaurant chain McDonald's. Related: "I'm like, 'Sorry, guys, I'm not doing it,'" she said of going to McDonald's with her sons. "They don't get McDonald's." Jessica explained that her concern lies in the ingredients. "I just feel like I don't know what's going on with [the] quality of that food," she shared. "It's stuff like that that I'm like, 'No, we're not.' Let's go have a great burger and fries at a fancy place. I'd rather pay more for you to have something fancy than something like that." Jessica insisted she's not "crazy, rigid and strict" — it's just one rule her children have to abide by. "That would be something that, if they asked me for, I would just be like, 'Next! Next place. Next down the line!'" You already know the comments prompted opinion online. Related: Many readers agreed with her. Writing under a People magazine post about Jessica's comments, one person said, "It's so unhealthy. I agree. Has it been in my house, yep. But as I age, nopers." Another person wrote, "Mine too .... I make my own burgers with good quality ingredients...." Related: At the same time, some thought it was a little unfair to her children. "Poor little boys," one person wrote in part, as another person said they're "glad [they] don't live there." Some also felt that Jessica's comments were a bit out of touch, as McDonald's is sometimes the only affordable option for many people. "See here's the thing Jessica, some of us are poor," someone wrote, as another person said her comments reeked of "privilege." Related: "Ok millionaire.. thanks for sharing," commented another. While someone else said, "'Kim, there's people that are dying.'" Tell me your stance in the comments. Also in Celebrity: Also in Celebrity: Also in Celebrity: Solve the daily Crossword
Bloomberg
28-07-2025
- Health
- Bloomberg
Cranswick Muscles Up
Morning, I'm Louise Moon Social media health obsessions in recent years have spanned 'clean eating', superfoods and, lately, protein intake. That's helping Cranswick muscle up.
News.com.au
28-07-2025
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
‘No one would even look at me': What really happened on Shallow Hal set according to explosive Gwyneth Paltrow book
New details about Gwyneth Paltrow's controversial role wearing a fat suit for Shallow Hal and crew accounts of her behavior on set are revealed in a bombshell new book about the star. Below is an edited extract from the upcoming book Gwyneth by Amy Odell. EXTRACT: A macrobiotic diet and so-called clean eating were among the first health fads that seemed to stick to Gwyneth Paltrow and her evolving persona. 'That was the beginning of people thinking I was a crackpot. Like, What do you mean food can affect your health, you f***ing psycho?' she later said. By the time she was doing interviews to promote Shallow Hal, she was espousing the kinds of health theories that would define her next career. The media generally quoted her without any fact-checking: 'I used to drink vodka tonics all the time … but I found that my kidneys got really hard because of it, and I noticed that my liver wouldn't drop down in my yoga back bends.' ('I don't think you could say there's some physiological explanation for what she's talking about,' said infectious disease expert Dr. Amesh Adalja.) Gwyneth's Ashtanga yoga routine involved getting up at 4am six days a week for an hour and forty-five minutes of practice. 'I never skip it unless I'm ill,' she said. She'd bring two yoga instructors with her on location shoots. While all of this was going on, she was spending her working hours in a fat suit. By the time Gwyneth showed up on the set of the Farrelly brothers' Shallow Hal in 2000 with her strange diet requests and intensive workout schedule, she was ready to cultivate the irreverent side of her personality, the fun-loving mischief maker. But the people around her were still seeing elitist Gwyneth. Before filming began, 120-pound Gwyneth slipped into a rubbery, twenty-five-pound fat suit. It came in six pieces — one that zipped over her torso, one that slipped over her legs like shorts, two calf pieces, and two gloves — plus a face that was essentially glued to hers, and was meant to make her look like she weighed 350 pounds. She planned to walk around downtown Charlotte, North Carolina (where the movie was filming) without an entourage or full camera crew, to experience what her high school yearbook had called her 'worst fear' — obesity. None of the pedestrians knew that a major movie was in their midst. They mostly ignored her, or skirted around her body like an obstacle dropped in their path. Barry Teague, a line producer, had been instructed to stay close, but to keep enough of a distance so that she felt like she was alone. Teague, who weighed 325 pounds himself, felt pained as he watched the scene play out before him. She moved more slowly than everyone else and blocked most of the width of the sidewalk. Pedestrians couldn't step off the curb to pass by because cars were parked, so they had to squeeze around her single file on the other side. Teague watched two attractive, middle-aged men hurry around her like she was a trash can, without saying 'excuse me' or regarding her at all. A pair of teenage girls gawked as she passed, then giggled to each other as she walked away. She did the walk a few times. Teague watched her stop at a hot dog stand and noticed how impatient the crowd behind her got, seemingly for no other reason than her being fat. After twenty minutes of walking around town this time, she called it quits. The exercise seemed too distressing for her to finish. Teague said, 'It was difficult to watch.' Before Gwyneth got to Charlotte, she had done a test run in New York. The crew dressed her in the fat suit in a room at the Tribeca Grand hotel and sent her to the bar to see if anyone could recognize her. 'No one would even look at me,' she recalled. 'If I was walking by a table, you know how naturally you just glance up. 'But people would see that I was heavy in their peripheral vision and not look, because I think they assume that's the polite thing to do. It was incredibly isolating and really lonely and sad … I didn't expect it to feel so upsetting,' she said. 'I thought the whole thing would be funny, and then as soon as I put it on, I thought, well, you know, this isn't all funny.' Gwyneth had a sign made for her trailer that read 'Kate,' seemingly as a decoy, even though the only people coming near it were crew who knew she was inside. She wasn't chummy. She didn't rush to make conversation, and she let her attention drift if the topic did not interest her. She seemed out of her element. 'Sometimes she felt like she was maybe more talented or more in-demand than other people, and you could see that,' said Teague. 'You could hear her eyes rolling sometimes.' When she finished a scene with an actor she didn't like who had a bit part in the film, she walked away poking a finger in her mouth, miming throwing up. During some scenes, Gwyneth wore a short skirt but chose not to wear anything underneath. One of the camera operators went over to her dresser, Cookie Lopez. 'Cookie, she's flashing us. You might want to tell her to sit differently.' Lopez looked at him and said, 'There's nothing I can do.' He said, 'You don't want to tell her so she can change what she's doing?' Lopez replied, 'If she likes doing that, I can't get her to stop.' Another day, the crew watched her riding around set on one of the electric scooters they used to get around, wearing only the bikini that was her costume for an upcoming scene. Though she never liked her legs, she struck one crew member as 'very, very comfortable in her own skin.' Compared to other Farrelly brothers film stars, Gwyneth was remote. ReneÌ�e Zellweger joined the Me, Myself & Irene cast and crew at a skating party. Jim Carrey, who starred in Me, Myself & Irene and Dumb and Dumber, threw the Irene crew a dance party on a boat. Gwyneth ordered an ice cream cart for the set and had her assistant push it around saying, 'It's from Gwyneth, it's from Gwyneth.' The crew was surprised — not that the gesture was comparatively small but that Gwyneth had done anything at all. When a technician died suddenly during filming, cast and crew contributed to a fund for his widow and children. The person in charge of collecting the money was telling colleagues one day how much they had amassed; Gwyneth overheard and asked them what they were talking about. One crew member signaled another not to tell her, sensing that Gwyneth wasn't someone who should be requested to donate. Later, someone overheard Luke Wilson, who had visited the set, tell her, 'The world doesn't revolve around you.' Even by the relatively permissive standards of 2002, Shallow Hal generated controversy for using fatness as a punch line. Gwyneth told friends and some of the crew that she felt like the film could bring attention to what would later be widely termed fat-shaming, which she experienced for the first time in her life in the fat suit. But that's not exactly where the discourse landed. 'If you're overweight and you see this movie, you're going to be disturbed. To be honest, I was uncomfortable throughout the whole movie,' singer and talk show host Carnie Wilson told USA Today. 'It made me feel like I was a big joke, and that crushes my heart.' Advocacy groups agreed. 'It's making horrible fun of fat people, and that is still acceptable in our culture,' said Miriam Berg, president of the nonprofit group Council on Size & Weight Discrimination. 'Would it be acceptable to make the same kind of joke about a person in a wheelchair or a person of colour? No.' Sandie Sabo, spokeswoman for the five-thousand-member National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, told The New York Times, 'If Gwyneth Paltrow had decided to make a movie about the African American experience, and she portrayed herself in blackface makeup, and yet her quote-unquote inner beauty was perceived as white, I don't think people would put up with that … Maybe that will help people understand.' Despite the backlash, the film fared fairly well in reviews and opened third at the box office, with first-weekend ticket sales of US$23.3 million. It would go on to gross $141 million worldwide on a US$40 million budget. Gwyneth did her best to respond to the controversy, but her well-intentioned innocence sometimes floundered on the spot. Matt Lauer asked her on the US Today show if the film made fun of fat people. 'No. I wouldn't have done it if that was the intention. You know, and I, I was concerned, I thought, 'Well is this going to be — is this going to be making fun of, of heavier people?' 'But it really doesn't. I mean — and actually the film is really — it ends up being a love letter to, to people who are overweight. 'It's like finally a film for people who are overweight, and, and,and it's — it's really a love letter,'she said. In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, she said, 'I got a real sense of what it would be like to be that overweight, and every pretty girl should be forced to do that.' Gwyneth had never seen the movie as mocking fat people and was disappointed that it hadn't ended up being her Charlie's Angels, though it was commercially successful. (Angels earned around $120 million more on the same budget.) But the backlash didn't seem to bother her all that much. She simply moved on to her next project.
