I love a food fad. But I love chocolate more. And the best chocolate of all comes from Easter Eggs. I don’t know why, even after a concerted, concentrated, totally committed, 60 year study. And its a very scientific study too. Very controlled, all variables monitored, contingencies allowed for, statistics analysed minutely. This is what I do:

Every Easter when the eggs ‘come out’, I go to the supermarket and buy as many as I can carry. Its like Beaujolais Nouveau, or grouse or salmon fishing; very short seasons, gotta get in early. Then with my eggs I open one up and, very scientifically, stuff it into my face as fast as my fingers can carry it. Then I sit back, enjoy the moment, smile broadly, and open the next one.

Ok, I try to exert ‘control’ but its Easter Eggs, FFsake, they’re gone by… well, the end of Easter. When we once more visit the supermarket and buy all they have left. The two in the picture are the last survivors. If they were an endangered species they’d simply have no chance in my house. Well, the Thorntons one might live a bit longer but Cadburys? No chance.

But now those wonderful Danes have told me that its ok, that I’m fine to act like a total fucking pig around Easter Eggs, and in fact, around all other forms of chocolate too. Its fine to stab your children in the hands with kitchen knives for trying to take a piece, its ok to eat yourself sick. Its ‘a condition’. Bless those Danes. Underactive FGF21. And all that time I’d thought I was just an obnoxious, greedy bastard.

Fibroblast Growth Factor 21 is an enzyme released in the liver after eating sweet things to tell you ‘enough, already; ya fat git’. But they found that 20% of people simply don’t produce enough or any (I didn’t read it that carefully; once they got to the point where my horrendous behaviour around Easter Eggs was justified I just went straight to the sports pages). One in 5 have this ‘condition’ where we don’t shut off the need for sweet stuff. We can’t help it. Its science wot dunnit, innit? Not my fault.

Being cruel and heartless Danes they’ve played with this hormone in rats and monkeys and found they can manipulate the amount of sweet they crave. There again, how’s a rat going to open the box? I’m a human and sometimes I have to use an axe or chainsaw in my frantic panic to get in. Stupid bloody Scandinavians.

Anyway, me, hormones, underactive, over-achieving, hyper-whatever and great excuses. What was even weirder thought was that it had been assumed that these hormone deficient people, the 20% who eat 80% of the chocolate, would suffer greater incidence of obesity. But they don’t. In fact they found the opposite. The ‘no filters’ chokky eaters were less obese than those who really can have that mythical ‘just one square’.

I choose to interpret this data in an alternative manner. As is my right. That eating chocolate makes you lose weight. Keeps you thin, fit and toned. So cancel your gym membership today and spend that totally wasted 100 quid a month on more chocolate. You’ll thank me for it tomorrow.

Happy Wednesday

A (with a ‘condition) xxxx