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Oh my heavens - NO! Why on earth would we want to do that? For the sake of some guilt trip? To punish fat people? To make eating out as unpleasant and boring as possible?

Okay, yes. I'm standing up right now and being counted: I'm fat. Overweight. Obese. In fact, morbidly obese. I'm afraid to get on my bathroom scale because I suffer from depression, and reading those triple digits will NOT help improve my day. So surely I should want to be counting every calorie that goes into my mouth? Wouldn't that help ease this whole "obesity epidemic" that the western world is suffering?

No. Because eating out isn't about calories and weight and obesity. Eating out is about experience and socialising and exploring the art of cooking. I'm not talking about grabbing a burger at lunchtime, I'm talking about sitting down with a bunch of friends and looking at a menu that's been brought to your table by a member of the waiting staff and spending some time talking to my friends and deciding whether I want to have the curry or something out of the tandoor. Whether I'll try something that took hours to cook, or something that's relied on the delicate culinary arts to come to fruition, and whichever it is that I choose, I want to choose it because it suits my mood, my state of hunger, the ambiance of the evening. I don't want it to be governed by some bloody guilt trip of how many calories it's got going on there and how many grams of fat and oh my goodness, this won't fit in with my diet, I'll just have a lettuce leaf thanks.

When I'm eating out I want to eat. I want it to be a pleasure and I want to choose my meal for the enjoyment value. Anybody who reads a women's magazine knows perfectly well that the grilled lean meat with steamed veggies or a side salad (no croutons, no dressing) is going to have fewer calories and less fat than the oily curry or deep fried whatever and can make that call without having to do a whole bunch of math over it.

The other point is - have you ever really read a restaurant menu? How many of them can actually get the spelling right and consistent? Precious few in my experience. And you think you want to trust them to put down a whole bunch of numbers about calories and stuff? Come on. They'll just bung in a few random numbers that they've made up on the spot. It'll be totally unreliable.

Eat out. Be aware of what you're eating and why. Enjoy yourself. Let an evening at a nice restaurant be one of life's pleasures. Let's not turn yet another thing into a guilt trip.

Learn more about this author, Amanda Le Bas De Plumetot.
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