Viral diets have a nasty tendency to combine two of my least favourite things: deprivation and maths. First there was the 5:2 diet (eat normally for five days, fast for two). The 40-30-30 “zone” diet (40 per cent of your calories from carbs, 30 per cent from protein and 30 per cent from fat) and the 16:8 rule (eat within an eight hour window, fast the rest). Now, it’s all about a new ratio – 30:30:30.
It is the answer to many of life’s most pressing questions. How to coax food into a fussy toddler? Pasta. How to feed a crowd on a budget? Pasta. How to get supper on the table in a rush? Pasta. Britain loves it. Sixty-eight per cent of us eat it at least once a week. Forty-two per cent stick a fork in it multiple times. Traditionally, however, we have viewed it as something of a guilty pleasure. A plate piled high with carbohydrates (topped, in all probability, with parmesan) is a sure-fire pat
Just thinking of Ventina makes me feel happy. It’s a long run that begins in Zermatt in Switzerland and crosses the border and goes down to Cervinia in Italy. There is this point, after the Swiss border when you turn a corner and come to a wide easy piste and in lovely conditions you glide along at 40mph doing S curves in a nice wavy line and it makes you feel that you can ski. Really ski.