No, I haven't been out drinking tonight. I'm in drinking instead and wading through statistical analyses. I want this stuff complete before I head off for a bit of a holiday in Wales followed by another bit in Ayr. I have family in both places - it's a holiday on the cheap. My favourite kind. Unless it's completed before I go, I can't send the bills, and coming home to a couple of cheques sounds good to me.

Anyway, stats is excruciatingly dull so I'm taking a break between sets, and musing on tonight's dinner. I had little time to make anything so I just called in at the chip shop.

There is a saying that you should never shop for food when you're hungry. It's true. If I go to the supermarket hungry I buy far more than I need and some of it ends up binned because it's non-freezable and therefore rotten before I get to it.

The saying applies to fast food too. I'm no big fan of hamburgers or McNuggets or Kentucky Fried Chicken-like-thing, but I do like the old fish and chips. The trouble is, whenever you go into one of these places you are, by default, hungry. If you weren't, you wouldn't go in, would you? So you are food shopping when you're hungry and that is a bad idea.

Restaurants are different. You order and you wait and make small talk with whatever bit of totty you have lured into your (rarely strong enough) web. You don't go in and demand food NOW because you're hungry NOW and want it NOW. Besides, restaurants cost money so you're a bit restrained by that. Also, you're in the place more to impress the totty than to load up your guts. The food is secondary.

With fast food, including chip shops, the food is relatively cheap and it's the only reason to go in there. So a bit extra is not a big problem. Tonight I ordered the jumbo haddock with chips and since I was ravenous, I added a side order of onion rings for £1.40.

I couldn't finish it all. A big chunk of it went into the bin.

Now we have to consider a couple of other aspects. Chucking out about £2 of food annoyed me but it won't break my finances. I'm not rich, but a loss of about £2-worth is just annoying. If I was jobless, it would be seriously painful. I remember when £2 lasted for days so it still stings a bit to lose it, but it won't really hurt me now.

The other aspect is the British insistence on 'finish what's on your plate'. Often followed by 'Starving children in Africa would love to have that much food'. My mother made me into a butterball when I was eleven. It faded, fortunately. Tip to any eleven year olds reading - the obvious answer, 'Starving kids in Africa wouldn't eat this crap' is just going to be very painful. Bite your lip, hold your nose, and wait until you're old enough to get out of there.

I spent a bit of time in China. Weird place, great people. They are fantastically and blatantly racist because if you don't look Chinese they can charge what they like. My guide had to queue twice for tickets to the Forbidden City, once for himself as Chinese and again to get a ticket for me, the Roundeye. Mine cost five times as much as his. It was still desperately cheap for the whole day it took to see not even half of it. It wasn't insulting, it was just interesting.

Anyway, I lost a lot of weight in China. I had no gut problems at all, in fact I've never been so free of gut problems even after being carried back to the hotel from a meeting with Chinese farmers after a drinking session involving something that tasted like aftershave. It wasn't an infection, it wasn't the food (which was all fried), it wasn't that there wasn't enough because there always was, it was all in the manner of presentation.

You have nothing on your plate. All the food is on a big rotating disk in the middle of the table. You spin it and take what you feel like onto the empty little plate in front of you. You never load that little plate, it's one bit at a time. When you've had enough, you stop. The last round of any Chinese meal is soup. When that arrives, you know it's over.

There is no 'plate that must be cleared' at any time. The Chinese had no problem with obesity until they met fast food, where you buy a big load of food and have to eat all of it yourself. Their normal way of doing things was a communal meal where you ate what you wanted and stopped when you had enough. Even in restaurants.

Fast food, per se, isn't what causes obesity. It's a combination of 'eat what you have in front of you / do you know what that cost?' / the guilt trip of 'the starving cheeldren' elsewhere that's causing the proliferation of the blubber.

And, of course, shopping for food when we're hungry. Which is all we ever do where the fast food is concerned.

Solution? I don't have one. I would oppose any attempt to shut down chip shops or any fast food place, including the ones I never visit. It's not the food that's the problem. It's the people and their attitudes to it.

If you don't want to get fat, stop eating when you've had enough no matter how much is left on your plate. Bin it, and next time make a bit less.

If you don't want your kids to get fat, don't force them to clear their plate and stop the Biafran guilt trips. Bin it, and next time make a bit less.

Not being fat is easy, really. Don't eat so much and you lose weight. Forget about diets that cost money. Losing weight should involve eating less and therefore cost less. Ignore those who tell you it's not your fault. They are doing you no favours. They want you to stay fat because then you're one of their pets. Get out of there!

Eat whatever you want. If you're overweight and concerned about it, just don't eat so much of it.

It's a simple equation. Those who claim it's complicated are just after your money.