he glossy, full-colour pictures of chocolate cakes and fruit custard flans in magazines that also carry diets are a forbidden realm but an irresistible one, rather like the enticing but off-limits offerings in pornography. One ice cream is described in sexual advertising as ’wicked’. Another is ‘to die for’. Denial of food is strongly linked to an obsession with it. Some anorexics and bulimics throw elaborate dinner parties, worship food, become ‘foodies’. They cannot eat it or absorb it but they must be near it. It’s a kind of masochistic torture.