Why can't women celebrate food?

Left at our proper genetic weight, we clearly don’t seem to like ourselves. It doesn’t say much for collective self-esteem when the shape we aspire to, a shape promoted by magazines and celebrities, is not a womanly one.

Why does eating make women feel guilty? What is wrong with giving your body the pleasure of food? Those Caesar-Salad-no-cheese-no-croutons ladies-who-lunch make deadly companions. What is their message? ‘I can deprive myself more zealously than you can?’ They can’t be much fun on a date either. If you were a man, who would you prefer to spend the rest of the evening with? A woman who shunts leaves around her plate, or one who digs in with relish, rolling her tongue around her lips to catch the last squidge of sauce?

Thin women develop a bizarre approach to food. Stick insect Tara Palmer Tomkinson eats nothing. But when she does lift a fork, she’s known to tuck into Eggs Benedict and Banoffee Pie at Chelsea’s chic 24-hour caff, Vingt-Quatre.

And the thin girl’s favourite telly entertainment? The food programmes. Cooking is safe to watch, not do – just look at what might happen. Flour-milk-and-butter is as likely to transform her into nannyish Delia Smith as turn into béchamel. Chopping chillies will have her geyser-gushing like Nancy Lam. And don’t even think about the Two Fat Ladies. At least the title was upfront.

Role models for the modern woman? I don’t think so. And why are male telly chefs totally tasty, slim and normal (red dwarf Anthony Worral Thompson excepted)? Think of Jamie Oliver, Peter Gordon, Gary Rhodes, Gordon Ramsey… They cook, they eat.