Your comment on slimming youngsters (Oxford Mail, January 17) should have emphasised the advantages of exercise a lot more.

Let us all be clear about these slimming clubs -- they are set up with only one objective in mind, namely profit.

I can't think of any reason other than a medical referral why a teenager should have to go to one of these clubs.

The fact that these organisations have any visitors at all says a lot about the youth of today and their parents.

Exercise is shunned, especially by youngsters. Today's generation is largely inert compared with the late 1960s and early 1970s when children didn't have the sedentary distractions.

This mindset gives these slimming clubs the ideal opportunity to fleece these poor youngsters and their parents, just because the teenager cannot be bothered to exercise and work up a little sweat.

I wonder what, in general terms, the medical profession thinks about these schemes. Perhaps a statement from the General Medical Council would be in order.

I realised quite early in life that if I exercised regularly, I could more or less eat what I liked, as regular exercise burns off what the food puts back on. Paul Lumley, Oxford