Why can't women celebrate food?

Try to come up with any book, painting, statue or movie that suggests thinness is sexy. In the classic film of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, Albert Finney sits at a table with a lusty, busty wench and for minutes on end, they shovel and guzzle dish after dish, grunting with excitement and greed. Babette’s Feast, Like Water for Chocolate, Chocolat were all about the power of food to stimulate passion.

Thin women know food can be comforting and sedating. That’s why it’s dangerous. They like soft-bodied women. They’re not threatening and can be viewed with a smidgin of contempt: ‘Whatever happened to her willpower?’

Conversations about calorie content and fats are the most boring in the universe. They’re a terrible self-indulgence, a celebration of the thinny’s tiresome introspection, designed to leave them feeling brittle and triumphant and full of smoke and coffee.

Rational, well-balanced choice won’t make you fat, and eating with visible pleasure makes you good company. And content.

The thing about food is it’s known to keep you alive. But perhaps that isn’t what women want. Because then they’ll grow old.

Do you think diet bores should get a life? Or is the writer being unfair? Tell us what you think!