I won’t be shamed by these fat controllers

LIKE many women I have an inbuilt calorie counter. I had it installed in my late teens, roughly around the same time I went through my university-induced tomato ketchup sandwich and Pot Noodle diet phase. I know.

Over the years this counter has become increasingly, frighteningly accurate. Oatcake? 42 calories. Banana? 108 calories. Sweet & Sour Pot Noodle? 318 calories (old habits die hard).

Thank God, then, the thing has an off switch. It may go into overdrive when I’m perusing the salad options at Markies (beetroot, goats cheese and lentil salad, 328 calories; hot smoked salmon and potato salad a whopping 647 calories) but when I go out for dinner, it is most definitely on shutdown.

Oh, how I love a meal out. It’s not just that someone else is cooking for you, and hopefully well, but the knowledge that this is an event, a time to have a glass (OK a bottle) of wine, chew over the events of the week and generally let loose with, yes, the calories.

The news that Food Standards Scotland (FSS) is considering ‘calorie caps’ on restaurant meals, then, went down in my house like a cold Pot Noodle. The Scottish Government’s food watchdog wants restaurants to start doling out smaller portions and labelling each dish on their menu with its calorie content.

The horror. Who wants to know how many calories are in their naughty steak, chosen because it’s been a rough week and sod it, you made it to the gym four nights in a row? Worse, who wants everyone else at the table to know about it too? Never mind the judgmentally raised eyebrow of the waiter, or the pious, salad-munching couple at the next table.

Obesity is a real and growing problem in Scotland. Nobody denies that. The FSS said this week in the same report that Scotland’s rate of obesity could soar to 40 per cent by the year 2030. This is clearly unacceptable. Something needs to be done if we are to stop the rot, otherwise we will morph into a deeply unhealthy nation that cripples both the NHS and our economy.

But in its report the FSS stated that ‘the out of home industry, skewed towards provision of less healthy food, must play its part’.

This seems rather unfair. Most of the big fast food chains – the ones you really could accuse of ‘less healthy food’ – are way ahead of the game here. McDonald’s has listed the calories for every single item it sells on its websites for years. Greggs does the same, as does Burger King and some of the newer burger chains in town such as Five Guys.

Attacking the entire dining out world, however, is foolish. Scotland has a vibrant world-class restaurant scene today, something that would have been unimaginable even 20 years ago.

This sort of nanny state calorie labelling could be crippling. And I can’t imagine it will do our tourism industry – which relies heavily on serious money from the US and Asian markets who come to Scotland to indulge every one of their senses, including their tastebuds – any good either.

Meals out are not an everyday thing for anyone I know. They’re special occasion, stuff-it-it’s-Friday events. Start shaming people every time they want to treat themselves and they’ll stay in and eat naughty things instead. It might do great things for the makers of Pot Noodle, but it will kill our restaurant industry stone dead.