What would be your go-to irresistible foods? The ones you can really go to town on in terms of quantity?

For me it was always things like Ginsters slices, cheap crisps (onion rings, anyone?), chocolate twist pastries, breakfast cereal, Nutella, white bread….

These foods have a couple of things in common.

Firstly, besides being calorie dense, they are essentially beige, a clue that what lies within is low on nutritional value.

Secondly, they are almost all high in fat, sugar, salt or all three, making them highly palatable and moreish.

Thirdly, they are all “soft”, a bit like baby food (yep, even the crisps just dissolve to mush after the initial crunch), which sounds pretty grim when you think about it.

This is a problem for weight management, because soft foods take less time and effort to eat, meaning we don’t really register that we have eaten them. They are low in fibre and protein too, therefore are digested really quickly and aren’t physically satisfying at all.

This helps explain why I used to manage to pack in all of the above foods in a single sitting, but even if they’re something you enjoy more moderately, you can see how easily they can contribute to weight gain or can derail weight loss efforts.

For some fascinating insights into this subject, take a look at this BBC documentary, “Irresistible: Why we can’t stop eating” (please note, it does come with a trigger warning for eating disorders).

So, the main takeaway from this is that if you have a weight loss goal, or even just want to be a bit more mindful about your diet, keep an eye on the baby food and give your body foods with more, er, body.