When the anti smoking campaign kicked in, I had absolutely no objection as it has been proved beyond any doubt that smoking is bad for you. It can in fact kill you, which if you think about it is the worst kind of bad for you that you can get.
What I do object to however, is applying the same kind of censorship to other areas which are not so black and white in terms of their effects on your health.
Take cake for example. I love cake. Granted it is not the best provider of nutrition that will pass your lips. It has a calorific content off the scale and more teaspoons of sugar than, well, something with lots of sugar, but I still love it. Women for centuries have baked cakes for their families; countless hours have been spent consuming it with cups of tea; English fetes award prizes for the best examples of it. It is a national heritage but no, it seems the health do gooders are trying to do to cake what they did to smoking – banish it from the face of the planet. And how do I know this? Because eating cake is starting to become socially unacceptable.
I have lost count of the number of people who tell me with some glee how bad for me it is as I about to impart a small morsel into my mouth. These are usually the same people who pick at a salad at lunch time pretending they are enjoying it and then eat a multi grain flapjack for afters. I bet they have good toilet habits.
I can actually feel the disapproving stares from other customers when I order cake for dessert in a restaurant as a ripple of disgust, or is that envy, washes around the room,
So does eating cake make me a bad person? No, because like everything else, I do it in moderation and that after all is a much better approach to life.
“Have you seen what she’s eating?”
Even the old office ritual of bringing in cake for birthdays is not what it was.
“Better not,” most say tapping their stomachs in a virtuous way.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind it if people don’t want to eat cake I just mind it when they don’t want me to.
