Britain, it would seem, has an eating disorder. In the early evenings of the last few weeks I've been forced to watch a group of individuals - to whom, I might stress, I have done nothing - confess their way through diets none of them really want to follow, to obtain a self-image they seem to have confused with being healthy. Owing to an inability to turn off the television (I have a television disorder) I've watched starving, gorging, self-loathing, recrimination and jubilation as they try desperately to arrest their slow slide into being fat. Now, I'm not suggesting for a moment that they represent the UK as a whole, but if the television networks think this programme will provide entertaining viewing - and either they do or they have a dark, twisted sense of humour - then the nation must be obsessed with watching its weight.
Concurrent with this has come the medical revelation that we're all binge drinkers. I have to hold my hand up to this. By the standards suggested last week I should be applying for my liver transplant next month because a "binge drinker" is someone who consumes more than six units in a single drinking session. To put that in perspective for you, that's two pints of Stella. Or three glasses of wine (before the budding doctors out there tell me that no, in fact that's six glasses of wine, I might comment that 175ml is not a glass. 175ml is the volume of a gnat's bladder, or possibly a Lilliputian demitasse). I refuse to believe that more than two pints of an evening will lead you to an early grave, much as I don't really accept that not going to confession results in eternal damnation. We've created a religion of consumption guilt. Don't your dieting friends have a slight air of religious fervour? We've fashioned a world of venial sins where the only commandment is Thou Shalt Not and the catechism is "Hail Rosemary Conley, full of jolliness, thou hast fewer wrinkles than I expected from a woman your age...." Slim-Fast is the new chrism.
And the dietary puritans are jumping up and down at the prospect of more converts. Bless me father for I went down the pub. Well, my son, join the museli-only diet and you too can find solace in transcendental constipation. Now that can't be healthy.
It's worse for students. Not only have many of us learned to metabolise alcohol as a foodstuff, we also have to face the fact that after a day's work one can't be bothered to cook, and after a day's lounging it seems a shame to ruin the tempo. So fast food is as depressingly regular a feature of life as student protests, members of the Socialist Worker Students and Carol Vorderman, patron saint of those with sod-all to do in the afternoon. But eating it is about as conducive to staying healthy as porcupine seduction, or rally driving for the partially sighted. Thus, in order not to show up on Ordnance Survey cartography, we need nutritionally balanced cooking that you can do in the advert break of Countdown and is as mentally taxing as Kilroy.
Health and taste are not mutually exclusive. Think pizza. Whilst Domino's finest is a bit heavy on the cheese, you can buy or make your own base, and then cover it in anything you want. Chuck on a can of drained chopped tomatoes, some chopped garlic, torn basil, sliced red onion, crumbled goat's cheese and a drizzle of olive oil, and after 10 minutes in a very hot oven, you have a meal. Equally, experiments with anchovy fillets, salami, or chorizo may be the high road to halitosis, but taste great. Though not, I suspect, all at once. And for something to grace your dining table? Brush a fillet per person of trout or similar fish with olive oil and finely chopped chilli. Stick it under a grill for about 12 minutes as you boil some new potatoes and toss some salad in a dressing of oil, lemon juice, and a touch of Dijon mustard. Sprinkle plenty of cracked black peppercorns over the potatoes and serve. There, now you can get back to binge drinking in the certain knowledge that whatever weight you put on, it's not your fault. Amen.
