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Friday 03 March 2006
Ideal and real nutrition: Friday's food quotation
I can take Katherine Whitehorn's remark a stage further: foods are fattening because they are nice. If one ate exclusively things one didn't like, one would be as thin as a rake. I have demonstrated this to my own satisfaction time and time again: were I to start the day with unfrozen pineapple juice, crispy ricicles, cod steaks and malted bread and margarine, together with very strong cheap Indian tea, and carry on the day in the same fashion, I should have no weight problems at all. Unfortunately the flesh is weak. Don't you find this?
1972 Philip Larkin, Letter to Charles Monteith, 13 January 1972 [ Selected letters of Philip Larkin 1940-1985, edited by Anthony Thwaite. Faber and Faber, 1992, p. 452]