THE number of diet and nutrition books that land on my desk is enough to make a girl more than a little paranoid.
What are they trying to tell me? It could be deemed somewhat insensitive.
In fact, all that this huge pile of rainforest demonstrates is that, as a nation, we are obsessed with our weight.
I know that this is hardly earth-shattering news, but
it is often forgotten that, while our weight obsession grows, so do our collective waistlines.
The hours spent devouring pages of healthy-eating manuals rather than plates of fish and chips do not seem to have made a dent in the obesity statistics.
Now that the summer is upon us, pressure to lose some weight and get fit reaches almost fever pitch.
Everyone is searching for the quickest and easiest way to shift those extra pounds, and if that means eating only cabbage for a week and doing a thousand star jumps before bedtime, then so be it.
And if that is not enough, there are always magic knickers – no, not those sported by Debbie McGee as she assists Paul Daniels, but rather the super-tight (and super-unattractive) support pants that compress the unsightly bulges most women wish would vanish.
These pants have become a firm favourite on TV make-over shows such as How to Look Good Naked and What Not To Wear, but it is fair to say that, given the choice, most women would rather lose excess pounds than push them up into somewhere under their kidneys.
But here comes the rub. Losing weight and looking great is not easy. If it were, we would all walk around looking like supermodels and an unlucky legion of health book authors would be out of a job.
It is clear that something needs to be done to contain the nation's weight gain, otherwise we risk something too horrible to contemplate – being labelled "fatter than America". This will no doubt cause a national collective shudder.
So, the latest measures being rolled out in Scotland take a realistic perspective on the problem.
It is near-impossible to wean the country off its beloved takeaways. A nation known for having chips with everything (chips with baked potato, chips with salad, chips with macaroni cheese, for goodness sake) is not going to retire its deep-fat fryers overnight. Instead, the Scottish Government is now saying: "Look, if you want a takeaway, that's fine. Maybe just think about having the least unhealthy options on the take-out menu."
This means so long doner kebab, hello shish kebab, farewell deep pan pizza, welcome thin crust.
Some have met these suggestions with derision. After all, whatever way you look at it, a takeaway is a take-away, but it is unrealistic to imagine a day when everyone wakes up and decides that they will never again enjoy a curry.
It is wishful thinking to hope that Scotland will immediately abandon its love of pizza, sweet and sour chicken or fish and chips … I could go on but it is making me hungry.
Instead, giving people information about the least damaging options they could choose seems to be a reasonable start.
You cannot ban fast food just because obesity is killing us. In that way, cigarettes would have been made illegal years ago. It is up to people to make their own, hopefully healthy, choices, and giving the information to help them make those choices is one thing those in power can do.
I would also back a campaign to encourage a limit on the number of carbohydrates that can be put on a plate. People still believe that potatoes – boiled, fried, or mashed – count towards their five-a-day vegetable intake and the more you can pile on your plate, the better.
Right, I'm off to get rid of those extra pounds by carrying home my diet and exercise reading material. It should be fine – as long as I don't put my back out first.
