Prue: I’ll stop mentioning calories on Bake Off
WHEN Prue Leith tasted the biscuits made by one contestant on this year’s Great British Bake Off, she said they were ‘worth every calorie’.
But the 81-year-old has revealed she may no longer use the phrase after she was criticised for ‘triggering’ viewers with eating disorders.
Miss Leith has featured on the Channel 4 show since 2017 and regularly judges by her own metric of whether contestants’ bakes were worth the calories.
She told BBC’s Desert Island Discs: ‘That’s because I often say, “that’s absolutely worth the calories” or “that’s not worth the calories”.
‘I don’t know why I say it. It’s just an expression of how much I love something.’
The South Africa-born restaurateur added: ‘Beat [an eating disorder charity]... say that I mustn’t say it because people who have an eating disorder feel guilty, feel unhappy and so they’ll eat more, so perhaps I’ll stop saying it.’
Tom Quinn, from Beat, said: ‘We are grateful to Prue for listening, and encourage her to go the whole way and commit to ending the use of her catchphrase.’
He added: ‘We estimate that 1.25million people in the UK have an eating disorder, and we believe that the removal of this catchphrase from the show would be beneficial to many.’