Pudding

Pudding – in its more solid, substantial and comforting sense – is not the stuff of which low-fat meals are made. That’s not to say it is completely out of the dietary question. For one thing, it’s important to have something to hand at the end of an anyway abbreviated supper, something to stave off that moment of loneliness and despondency that always threatens to settle when you realise that eating is over for the day.

I have not got a particularly sweet tooth: my weakness will never be biscuits or cakes or puddings; it’s bread and cheese that, once I start eating, I can’t stop. But somehow when I go on a diet (even if I never even mouth the word to myself, let alone say the word out loud) I suddenly want double-chocolate pecan gâteau or any other revolting concoction so long as it’s high fat. It may be psychologically predictable and embarrassing, but there it is. I deal with this in the main by not forbidding myself such stuff: I buy wedges of gooey, icing-encrusted and nut-studded confections, mostly from Marks & Spencer’s, since it’s all calorie-counted, and reckon it into my overall intake. There are times when it’s preferable to eat a vast bowl of steamed greens doused with soy and then a sugar-heavy, fat-saturated pudding for supper rather than a virtuous, balanced and more orthodox combination.