When you're trying to put on weight foods that are usually proscribed can become prescribed. If you've been there, what helped you gain mass while keeping your diet in balance? It's the time of year when many people guilt-tripped into joining a gym by an avalanche of articles and adverts after Christmas start to run out of steam. Forget holding onto the blubber for the unusually cold weather that still refuses to loosen its grip, you need to start thinking about your bikini body NOW. If you're trying to drop the pounds, there is plenty of support from diet clubs you can join, or your friends and colleagues who are also chowing on lettuce and water and trying to muster the energy to do some exercise.

Are 'detox' diets and dishes complete hooey, or might there be something in them? If I could ban any single word from discussions about food and drink, the word would be 'detox.' Outside its medical definition the whole concept of 'detoxing' is spurious. The body clears itself of an excess of rich foods and / or the after-effects of too much alcohol on its own, aided by the miracle breakthroughs known as eating in moderation and drinking water.

It may not be his only concern, but Lord Stern's suggestion that changing our diet would help slow climate change is important

Clearly irritated that his argument in an interview in the Times had been boiled down to a "go veggie to save the planet" headline, Nicholas Stern has issued a clarifying statement:

I think that once people understand the great risks that climate change poses, they will naturally want to choose products and services that cause little or no emissions of greenhouse gases, which means 'low-carbon consumption'.