Thank you, thank you, all the WoM regulars who emailed, full of caring concern after last week's post on organic food. In a moment of ranty hyperbole I said I didn't give a toss about healthy eating and oooh, at least two people, (yes, one of whom was you, thanks Mum), felt this was a short-sighted attitude to my personal wellbeing.
In truth I care about healthy eating about as much as the next foodie. I mean, though we know much more about the contents of our food than almost anyone else and at least as much as the most rabid gym rat about its effect on our bodies, we seem to have developed ways not to care.
Frank Bruni, the formerly all-powerful restaurant critic of the New York Times recently published an autobiography, Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater that talks honestly about his lifelong problems with eating. Bruni's book is an extreme analysis of a protracted struggle but most of our own food writers and sleb chefs have also, at some point come clean about, if not 'problems' with food, then at least concerted attempts to control their weight.
Terry Durack famously slimmed down on Jill Dupleix's 'Lighten Up' diet; Nigella Lawson has spoken candidly about her body image; Clarissa Dickson-Wright, in a rather different way, has talked about hers. Some chefs never stop banging on about their marathon training and gym regimes.
In the end, though Giles Coren casually drops his lap times into his reviews, though our own Jay Rayner might get photographed pumping iron, though I, in my own small way, can occasionally be seen dragging my sorry tripes around the park bathed in a glossy layer of porksweat and Côtes du Rhône, the crucial point is that none of us actually care enough to do the obvious thing and eat the boring, moderate diet recommended by doctors, government, media, and caring relatives.
Some of us construct complicated mathematical rationalisations explaining why government guidelines and NHS statistics don't actually apply to us. Some strike secret, desperate bargains with our various deities - honest, God, just one more bender, I promise once I hit 50 I'll be on wheatgrass and carrot enemas. But all of us, to a slightly porky man and Rubenesque woman, are practising staggering levels of self delusion in pursuit of our passion.
But what do you think? How do you balance health and the pursuit of the eatable? Are you in active denial, riding the handcart to hell on a piped bed of buttered mash and waving a torchon of foie gras, or are you secretly sneaking out for midnight runs? And at what point of lardy breathlessness and stratospheric BP do you say enough is enough?
