One third of pregnant women “lose control” of their eating, according to a researcher at University College London, and gain an additional 3.7kg, a figure that made me laugh out loud, because if you can count them in single digits and they’re not stones, such weight gains don’t know the meaning of “losing control”. The researcher, Nadia Micali, said something more interesting about her findings than you’ll usually find in the overeating business: “We often imagine that just telling women: ‘Don’t eat for two, don’t eat for two,’ is going to be enough. But loss of control needs to be treated slightly differently in a more psychologically acute way.”

When the question is, “Why are people eating too much?”, the first answer is usually public education: tell them to eat less. Then tell them to eat differently. Then tell them in a patronising way, maybe with colourful cartoons. It doesn’t work, because there is no information deficit: everyone knows that celery is healthy and doughnuts are not. Frustrated by the inefficacy of telling people things they already know, public health turns wrathful: tell those lard buckets they will get cancer. Tell them they already have diabetes, and it’s their own fault. Tax them! The thrill of the punitive language gets in the way of any impartial analysis of whether it’s working; or something must, because it isn’t, and still they stick with it.

Appetite is mysterious, deeper than reason, unresponsive to threat. The “loss of control” in pregnancy is raw and intense. Smart public health would study these women intently – their hormonal swerves, their blood, their neurology, their pupils when they see a Tottenham cake – for they may hold the key that unlocks a puzzle fit for Indiana Jones. But it won’t, because they’re fat, right? So, they must be greedy, and what can you learn from a person without control?