Chewing

I read in a (bridal) magazine that you could lose 6lb in 6 days by going to the Viva Mayr Clinic to learn to chew slowly. You would be taught the "philosophy of chewing" and spend a week turning your food into pulp in your mouth before swallowing. All for a mere 2500GBP.

Honestly, what other money-sucking ploy are they going to invent? Squeezing your bum every time you take a mouthful (with a bum squeezing session and philosophy course included)?

That said, this chewing thing has been on my mind. So, yesterday, as I sat next to two slim Chinese ladies on the plane, I decided I would eat at their pace and see if their skinniness had anything to do with chewing -as opposed to their genes, which I can obviously do nothing about.

So I watched them out of the corner of my eye, and only took a mouthful when they did... It's never taken me so long to eat a -sorry, half- a tiny plastic bowl of noodles in my life.

They took the smallest bites on earth, and sometimes to my deepest annoyance, they would start to chew a bit of noodle off their fork, and then put it down with the noodles still on it, and take a sip of tea. Then came the fruit. Instead of wolfing it down and letting the juices drip down their chins, they carefully and slowly opened the little saucer, sniffed the fruit, prodded it, put it down and then had about a third of a slice of watermelon. At which point they must have been full or bored, as they put the fruit aside, sipped their tea, leant back and proceeded to sleep/touch up her makeup.

That's 6lb in 6 minutes, baby!

Please send 2500GBP directly to my Swiss bank account.