An Olympic gold medalist praised the malnourished dictatorship of North Korea for keeping its people thin.

James Cracknell, a former member of the British Olympic rowing team who is now planning to run for Parliament, made the shocking statements on an interview with Sky News.

“If you think of the two countries of the world that have got a handle on obesity, what do you think they are? Which two countries? North Korea and Cuba. See, they are quite controlling on behavioral change.”

When the stunned interviewer pointed out that North Koreans weren’t physically fit, but rather starving to death, Cracknell doubled down—blaming foreign affairs for food shortages, but still praising their commitment to keeping slim. “Exactly. But there were sanctions and everything else. But the example is behavourial change.”

North Korea and Cuba, two of the last remaining communist dictatorships in the world, have seen rampant food shortages for decades. North Koreans, on average, are about three inches shorter than their genetically-identical neighbors in capitalist South Korea—because the population has seen such widespread malnutrition over such a long period of time.

This isn’t the first time fitness gurus have praised dictatorships for starving their own people. The Washington Post, in December 2016, also landed in hot water when they praised Castro for starving his people—calling the island’s post-Soviet Union economic collapse in the 1990s a “public health phenomenon,” because Cubans slimmed down an average of 10 pounds due to lack of food.