Marmalade. Fat.

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Nigel Slater discusses marmalade.

Marmalade making is about as pleasurable as cooking can get. It isn't something for those whose only reason for cooking is the finished product. If the process of peeling oranges, painstakingly cutting their skin into fine strands and constantly checking their progress on the stove is a chore, then don't do it.

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McLagan believes this epidemic of overconsumption is largely related to our [ie, American] culture of eating for the wrong reasons at the wrong times.

"People eat because they're bored or just walking down the street," McLagan said. "They're not sitting down and eating a meal in moderation and then not snacking in between."

McLagan further believes that including good-quality animal fat in that meal will start us down the road to wellness. "Because fat is digested slowly," she writes, "eating it leaves us feeling sated, and we're less likely to snack between meals. Eat the right fats and you'll probably lose weight."

Indeed, much has been made of the so-called "French Paradox," the observation that even though people in France have a diet rich in animal fats, they tend to be thinner and have a lower incidence of coronary disease than their American counterparts. McLagan suggests that this phenomenon may reflect not so much the presence of fat in European diets as it does the absence of processed food.

"We have reduced our intake of animal fats, but at the same time the total amount of fat in our diet has increased," she writes. "We have replaced animal fats with man-made hydrogenated fats, which are full of trans fats."