Addendum to the Report of the Spaghetti Committee: The Calorie Conundrum

From great heights, how the proud do fall. Today I belly-flopped into a trap, bristling with punji sticks. It hurt.

I need to back up a bit. As part of my new regime, my quack had recommended I see The Nutritionist, who would help me navigate the murky waters of gluten-freedom. Ever dutiful, I presented myself in her office this afternoon, food diary in hand, flush with triumph after yesterday's painstaking and, it must be said, extremely time-consuming spaghetti experiment. 'I am really on the ball,' I thought, perhaps immodestly. 'She is going to be incredibly impressed by the research I am doing. I'll sure be able to tell HER a thing or two!' I should add that The Nutritionist seemed like a very nice lady, eager to please and wanting to help.

I launched into a description of my g/f pasta travails and helpfully tendered some of my findings, thinking she could use them in future consultations. On a roll, I told that I now had a chart detailing the dry weights of various g/f noodles required for something like reasonable servings. I even offered, as a final flourish, some editorial comments on the relative gastronomic merits of the spaghetti specimens tested. She looked at me like I had two heads.  'But what about the calories?' she whispered.

Oops. Hadn't thought of that.

I should mention that, as a rule, calories are not things by which I am preoccupied. My BMI is below normal and I don't really eat very much (all evidence of these scribblings to the contrary). But The Nutritionist gave me pause. I saw myself through her eyes in six months' time, ballooned to gargantuan proportions by a surfeit of gluten-free spaghetti. 'People new to such diets often gain a bit of weight,' she added sadly, 'because they don't realize how dense and filling these products can be.'

Curses! I had made a common mistake, which is something I don't like to do. I prefer, of course, to make mistakes that are uncommon.

I raced home, preparing myself mentally for the Bad News. And boy, was it ever bad. Hasty calculations in Moleskine (which is beginning to resemble the notebook Sean Connery carried around in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - all bits of glued-in paper and illegible aides memoire) revealed that the ideal corn-pasta serving I had empirically generated contained 560 calories. Spaghetti style, 580. And the much-reviled multi-grain pasta a colossal 610 calories. Yikes - more than a Big Mac! Hyperventilation was narrowly averted only through the timely application of a calming hot cup of Earl Grey.

So it's back to the manufacturers' instructions and Lillipution spaghetti-portions, at least for me - and another lesson learned. I'll get the hang of this ... one day.

Next up: more wit and wisdom from The Nutritionist, including her thoughts on the whisky issue