Food? It's an emotional minefield out there!

While most men are happy to scoff whatever is put in front of them, many women go through a whole gamut of emotions, considerations and judgment calls before they raise fork to mouth. Take ‘first date food’: pasta, for example, is a no-no-no – there’s no room for instant bloat in a size 10 LBD, slippery strands of spaghetti play havoc with lipgloss and the fart potential is way too risky to gamble with. Meanwhile, seafood is too salacious, Tex-Mex is common and curry is downright blokeish. Anything French, though, makes us look sophisticated, and salad is a safe all-rounder; we’ll go home starving, but at least we’ll have looked all delicate and pretty while gazing into your eyes.

And what do we go home to? Chocolate - which fluctuates between being a girl’s best friend or a potential WMD. Advertisers are well aware of this: consider the bar of Galaxy stashed in an underwear drawer, the woman who has to flash her co-workers because the calorie count in a bag of Maltesers ‘isn’t naughty enough’ or the iconographic, phallic imagery that promotes a Cadbury’s Flake and tell me that women and chocolate have a healthy relationship?

And the complicated psychology gets even trickier when it comes to shopping. I know women who carry pristine Waitrose carrier bags folded up in their handbags when heading off to shop at Lidl, burn ready meal packets rather than put them out in the Green Box for all the road to see and decant Nescafe into an ancient FairTrade-labelled jar before their friends drop in for coffee. In Girl World, it seems, You Are What You’re Seen To Eat. Bugger that. In my world, beef masala ravioli with a side of chicken wings and a hot chocolate sauce maketh the woman.