Came across a concept here that I find kind of strange - 'gaining'. People who want to gain as much weight as possible.

Rather like trying to lose as much weight at possible, this seems rather unhealthy to me. I would imagine that it's better to stay at a stable, natural weight for your height and level of activity rather than beating yourself up one way or the other. And surely deliberately making yourself obese will kill you in the long run?

Still, interesting reading, especially for anyone who's ever felt browbeaten by the diet brigade - so many women diet down to 7-10 pounds lower than they're really happy with, and some gainers, it would seem, eat very healthily, just too much of it.

Weight, though, is one of those things that is always a question of balance. For instance, I gained about seven pounds over Christmas. This is normal - I gain at least this much every year, then shed it again in the spring. But this year I kept an eye on it because last year I gained 27 pounds, due to the winter being very cold - and I didn't manage to shift it all.

A modest amount of winter weight gain, I always feel, is a natural process, and one that I observe with my animals, who all plump up quite deliciously in the winter months, then get skinny again as soon as the weather gets warmer. 

But only when the weather is crying out for salads and gazpacho will losing weight be a natural process, not a starvation diet. And the kinds of 7km walk I did last Sunday also help it to drop off fairly easily.

For me, the balancing act is that I look my absolute best at 8st 3lb (optimum weight for my height), but can't be arsed because that means watching every damn thing I eat. At 8st 12lb I can eat everything I like, but feel a bit too flabby. Maybe 8st 7lb will be a good compromise this summer - and the good news on that is that suddenly a whole raft of my clothes that didn't get worn last year would become available again as if they were new. 

I came across an article on Care2Connect today that intrigued me - during recessions, people get leaner and greener.

Apparently, we eat more home-cooked meals during a recession, rather than restaurant fare loaded with hidden calories; we get out our bikes and stop using the car; and that decreased use of the car means we emit fewer greenhouse gases and have fewer accidents. 

It's not all good news, though. Our physical health may get better but our mental health gets far worse as we worry about jobs, the economy and whether we'll be able to keep up our mortgage payments. Here are a few of the details.

Upsides to the recession

1 - you'll eat at home more - and home cooking is better for you. “Home cooking has fewer calories and more nutritional value than foods purchased outside the home,” says Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition at NYU.

2 - you'll probably cut down on red meat. You may do that because it's more expensive but it's good for the environment and good for you. 

3 - you'll probably buy more locally produced food. Again, that's a money-saving thing: locally grown food is usually cheaper, but again it's good for the environment and good for you.

4 - you'll probably exercise more. There are several reasons for this. One is that you lose access to other forms of entertainment when you're on a budget, and another is that people take up walking or riding a bike in order to reduce fuel costs. As most of us do far too little exercise generally, having a bit more can only be a good thing. 

5 - you'll probably drink fewer fizzy drinks because they're expensive - and that's good for your teeth, your digestive system and your sugar levels. 

Downsides to the recession

1 - you'll probably eat more chocolate. C'mon girls, we all know that one's true - feeling depressed, fed up or overwhelmed? Chocolate's the cure...

2 - you may eat more Spam. What, never, you say? Apparently sales in the US are burgeoning, which is bad news for your arteries, given that it's a fatty meat that's packed with bisphenol-A.

3 - you'll probably have less sex. Being depressed about the state of the economy isn't conducive to a good love-life. On the other hand, if you're not depressed about the economy and you don't have the money to go out, you might end up having more sex. 

4 - if you get pregnant, it's more likely to be a girl. OK, this might not be a downside at all, but it's something that intrigues researchers. It appears that when times are hard, female births go up partly because undersized male foetuses abort spontaneously. “Given the current economy, we should see reductions in male to female sex rations by January or February of next year,” says Ralph Catalano, professor of public health at UC Berkeley.

As one final bit of information, cosmetics sales are booming in the economic downturn - up 40 per cent at the last count, according to Care2Connect, as women treat themselves to a little bit of a pick-me-up in the face of all the gloom and doom. Nice to know that even if we're queuing up at the dole office, we still like a bit of lippy. 

With belts tightening all over the place, one way to cut food prices while still eating well which I'd seriously recommend is a slow cooker.

A lot of people bought slow cookers back in the 1970s. They were usually brown ceramic, very heavy and difficult to clean, and many were only used a few times before they were put away in the garage. If you still have one of these, get it out - they're by far the best type and knock the modern competition into a cocked hat, IMHO. 

If, however, you have to settle for one of the modern ones, get one that will cook on as low a wattage as possible. The whole point of a slow cooker is that it should cook slowly - somewhere around 50w to 100w is ideal. Many of the more modern versions cook at 250w and if you get this, you're really just buying yourself an extra conventional oven. What you want is a cooker that does a good stew in something like 8 to 12 hours rather than 3 to 4, so you can leave it on while you're at work, or overnight. 

Why slow cook?

1. Because it's delicious. Slow-cooked food retains all of its flavour and texture compared with oven cooking or stovetop cooking.

2. Because it's very cheap, costing only the same as burning an incandescent lightbulb.

3. Because it's virtually idiot-proof. Pretty much anything you put in there comes out tasting good. 

4. Because it's no-maintenance. You can leave it alone while you're out or asleep, and food can't catch, burn, or overcook (all that happens if you go over the maximum time with a roast, for instance, is that the meat falls apart - it won't end up blackened to a crisp). 

5. Because it enables you make full use of tough cuts of meat such as brisket or old-fashioned meats such as mutton. Meat near the bone is actually far more flavoursome than white meat such as chicken breast, but we have lost the art of cooking it.

6. Because it enables you to easily reduce your meat consumption without noticing it. 

General tips

Slow cooking results in highly flavoured food, where all the flavours intermingle, so it is one very useful way to reduce the amount of meat you use - you can really stretch recipes without compromising quality. My DH is a natural carnivore, for instance, but I am able to serve something like half or a quarter of the meat we used to consume by substituting with vegetables such as potatoes, chickpeas, kidney beans and root veg. These pick up the flavour of the meat and become truly delicious. 

Because slow cooking retains the texture of the food very well it is also now the main way I cook soft vegetables such as courgettes, tomatoes, aubergines, squash and marrow. It is an excellent way to cook dishes such as stews, curries and chillis, and also works for soups, creme caramel and even producing stock. If you are interesting in making preserves, the first steps towards jam or chutney can be done overnight in a slow cooker without supervision, leaving you only with the bottling stage. And finally, you can even roast a chicken in one, while you're out at work with no danger of overcooking or causing a fire. 

I use my slow cooker about every other day and usually make enough for two meals. I have two types. One is a 20-year old Tower Compact Slo-Cooker, where the ceramic pot is integral to the machine and can't be taken out for washing. This makes it fiddly to clean, but the food it produces is absolutely superb because the lid is very heavy and no flavour evaporates. The other is a Morphy Richards metal one with a separate base and a glass lid. This allows you to use the top section on the stovetop, then transfer it to the base for slow-cooking. Although the flavour is not quite as good, it is much easier to use, so in practice I use it more often. 

How to cook

I usually slow cook overnight. For some reason, 15 minutes preparing a meal before bedtime seems to take less time than 15 minutes at any other time, so I generally prepare the food at the end of the evening. I cook overnight, switch the machine off in the morning and then the food's ready whenever we're hungry (I understand that some machines are programmable, so you can set them to auto switch off, which is probably a useful feature). 

Slow cooking does require a bit of practice, but there are some basic things to remember:

* No flavour evaporates, so go easy on the herbs and spices. 

* No water evaporates, so you don't need as much liquid as usual. 

* Dice vegetables into small pieces so that they cook all the way through.This takes a bit of getting used to and different veg behave in different ways. Turnip and potato need smaller dice than carrot or parsnip, for instance. If you're used to roasting veg, use this as a guideline.

* Meat cooks more quickly than veg, so you can use larger pieces, or place it on top of a base layer of veg (it cooks in the steam).

* Don't keep taking the top off to check progress. The whole point of slow cooking is to create a water seal around the lid, so don't keep breaking it. 

Getting started

If you buy a new slow cooker, it will come with a recipe book, but you can also find them at places like Amazon. To get you started, though, here is a recipe that I made a couple of nights ago. 

Chilli con (not much) carne

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS

2 onions, thinly sliced

2 carrots, sliced

1 swede, diced

good thick slice of white cabbage, shredded thickly

200g of beef mince

4 tablespoons of cooked red kidney beans

olive oil

1tsp salt

1tsp pimienton (smoked red pepper powder)

sprinkle of cayenne pepper (according to taste)

red wine and water

METHOD

Brown and drain the mince.

Fry the onion in oil until it takes colour, adding the salt to bring out the juices.

Add the other ingredients (except spices) and stir until well mixed.

Add water or wine to about halfway up the dish.

Add the spices and give another stir.

Slowcook 8 to 12 hours on low. 

Serve warm, with crusty bread and a sprinkling of cheese

Keeping a food diary could help you shed unwanted pounds, according to a recent study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine (copyright Reuters).

In a study of nearly 1,700 overweight adults who were being tested in a weight-loss programme, researchers found that those who kept a daily food diary lost twice as much weight in six months as those who did not. The average loss was 13lbs - a slow and steady rate that probably indicates substantial diet and lifestyle changes.

"The more food records people kept, the more weight they lost," said Dr Jack Hollis, the lead researcher on the study. The diaries were combined, for both the diary group and the control group, with exercise and group meetings where dieters were encouraged to lose weight.

A food diary need not be a formal affair, added the researchers in this study.  Simply making a list of all the food and drink consumed each day can help people become aware of their habits and make changes for the better.

Food diaries are well known to those of us who suffer from inflammatory bowel disease, because there's no other way to keep track of which foods cause reactions and which don't. They may be tedious, but they're extremely helpful.

However, clearly something else is at work with these weight-loss diaries. Perhaps some people gain weight because they eat unthinkingly and keeping a diary helps them to spot that, or people can begin to see the emotions or situations that cause them to overeat (being stressed, tired, angry, visiting the in-laws, when certain friends drop by etc) and can then take measures accordingly. Perhaps it makes them realise quite how much they turn to food, and how often.

Anyway, whatever the reason, it's welcome research - after all, a diary costs nothing to keep so it is a simple thing to add to your repertoire of diet aids. 

Having fat friends can raise your risk of obesity, according to the latest findings.

Well, that's a doh moment, isn't it? Of course it does, because we live in a culture that revolves around eating and drinking. It's like having friends who take drugs or friends who drink - birds of a feather flock together.

People who live a fat, unhealthy lifestyle aren't all that likely to spend their time together doing sports, I'd hazard a guess. Trampolining, swimming, playing tennis, jogging? Not really fattie pursuits. Stuffing your face at McDonald's, though, that's another matter. Big blowouts down the local Chinese. And if everyone around you is eating a huge amount, it makes your huge amount look normal, right?

Another survey just a few weeks ago found that, worryingly, few people in the UK are now able to correctly gauge how overweight they are. This is an alarming trend, as it means that many more people are inching towards the danger zone of clinical obesity while believing themselve only 'a few pounds over'. But when everyone around you is that same few pounds over, overweight begins to looks normal. It skews your perceptions.

The zeitgeist in the UK has changed dramatically over the last 10 years, and it is leading to a population that is becoming dangerously overweight. People work longer hours and eat more convenience food, packed with empty calories. They don't cook at home, and they have no idea what constitutes a balanced meal. They eat out far more an in restaurants, where portion sizes, as my friend K noted, have increased. And you're served a large portion, it takes discipline to not eat it all, especially if you grew up with the kind of 'finish what's on your plate', or 'eat the meat' mentality that was drummed into me back in the 60s. Food is love, and you'd better not refuse anything mommy makes for you. I've had some very sniffy waiters take away my plates over the years, apparently personally wounded at how little I've eaten. 

But if you do finish what's on your plate, you could be looking at a fantastic amount of over-consumption - which is the reason that most people who regularly dine out have more body fat than those who eat at home. Restaurant meals are designed to be tasty and mouthful, not nutritious and balanced. Even expert dieticians routinely underestimate calories in restaurant meals by about 37 per cent, which doesn't leave the rest of us with much chance. So is it a surprise to learn that many restaurant meals top a staggering 1000 calories? That a latte and a cake from Starbucks is about 930? That if you eat that once a week, by the end of the year you'll have gained 14 pounds?

The worst thing is that, confronted with days' worth of food on a plate, some people still don't like to leave anything because after all, they've paid for it. It's a joke here among the ex-pats that you can always tell the visiting Brits because all they ever mention about restaurants is the portion size - as long as the plate's full, they don't seem to care what the actual food's like. 

Oh well, we all know it's a hard habit to break. I recently reduced my consumption of protein to 50g per serving and it's a shock, because it's an unbelievably small amount of food - less than one crottin of goat's cheese, only three slices of duck breast, a quarter of a fillet of chicken. I think I'm doing pretty well (and I feel a lot healthier for it) but I still have a way to go to reach the amount recommended by the US Food and Drug Administration, which is 56g per day. I can't imagine how most people would fare when confronted with this as a 'meal' - it barely looks enough to feed a hamster but actually it's extremely healthy. You just focus on vegetables and use proteins as a garnish. 

Nevertheless, the best way to not have this amount of protein look completely stranded on the plate is to have the plate smaller, so I've used that old dieter's trick and switched from a main-course plate to a sideplate at lunch, and from a sideplate to a saucer in the evening. I now eat like a little pixie. Watch this space, before I fade away....