Consider me sproutraged by distasteful Brussels-bashers

When your Christmas lunch is laid before you on Monday, and the inevitable tussle over fair division of the pigs in blankets ensues, there will be one plate that elicits far less friction: the Brussels sprouts.

They are so unloved, says Leicestershire County Council, that festive feasters must indulge in no more than six of them, as dishing out any more per person will only see them consigned to the dustbin.

There is, admittedly, a serious side to this. At a time when national food waste has reached crisis point, keeping a watchful eye over what we turf out is prudence of an entirely rational kind. But hasn’t the poor, sprout-bashing soul who runs the LCC’S Twitter account (from where this nugget of wisdom was shared) rather missed the point of Christmas chow?

Yes, turkey with all the trimmings scratches a particular kind of itch, but it is the leftovers – the scraps of white breast meat, drying round the edges; the cranberry sauce that has developed a thin film across the top from being left out too long; the sprouts, discernibly more wrinkled than the day prior – that encourage the very best of our ability to make do and mend.

A major reason we throw out so much food is because we don’t have the time to actually look at the resources we’ve got and use them wisely – Christmas is, surely, the one period when the luxury of a few extra leisure hours is ours. So why not employ them to their fullest?

And there is no greater leftover food than sprouts. Roast them off with apple and bacon? Dice them up into a turkey stir fry? Blitz your unwanted Christmas greens into a virtuous vegan smoothie (if you really must)?

I’ve long harboured my own dirty, cruciferous secret – I am a year-round sprout eater; there is nothing better (though my colleagues tell me otherwise) than the cameo of a sprout in an otherwise staid packed lunch. The reduced section of my local Tesco suggests that others do not share my enthusiasm aside from right around the big day, for which I am, frankly, grateful.

But I have never understood why they are so roundly shunned; I’d gladly pile up an extra plate of them sooner than reaching for the Christmas cake. They aren’t the most fragrant of foods – of that I am under no illusion – but where cheese’s whiffiness adds to its pulling power, bizarrely a potent Brussels pong only further besmirches their good name.

And you don’t have to share my gusto to recognise that they are among the most adaptable of vegetables. I confess to minding little whether they are fried, boiled – even a quick go in the microwave works for me. On behalf of the national abuse endured by these innocuous little veggies, consider me truly sproutraged.

In any case, at the one time of year when people disband their distaste for a day or two, let’s avoid employing the LCC’S lunch-by-numbers approach to our Christmas meal. They lack the showy glamour of brandy pudding engulfed in flames; the irresistible smell of the chestnut stuffing, sure, but Brussels – either at the lunch table, or repurposed in the days that follow – are a festive necessity. In the season of excess and joy, of too-tight trousers straining over happily full bellies, putting a headcount on veg is a Christmas tradition we should be in no hurry to adopt. FOLLOW Charlotte Lytton on Twitter @charlottelytton; READ MORE at telegraph.co.uk/opinion