I was out with my new friend Jason Smith at Jyoti's on Wednesday (we're planning to set up a Birmingham Salon in conjunction with the Institute of Ideas). Because Jason reads a lot about food, I mentioned the craze that's been sweeping Talis for some time now - namely Graze. For the uninitiated, it's a service delivering a daily box of healthy snacks that costs about £3 a day. I told him that my colleague Grant White started subscribing at the beginning of this week, and that I was monitoring him carefully to see whether he survived the vertiginous drop of food intake. By coincidence, our colleague Zach Beauvais went off on leave the following day, and forgot to cancel his Graze subscription. So he kindly emailed me and invited me to treat myself to the contents of his Graze box. I'd brought in food for that day so I saved the box for today.
I was pretty nervous, I don't mind admitting, at the thought of surviving a whole working day on only three slices of pineapple, a small portion of "fire nuts" and an even smaller portion of cashew nuts. For good measure, I took along a small banana and a raspberry yogurt to supplement what seemed like a draconian quantity of food.
For breakfast I had what I always have - two boiled eggs and a glass of cloudy apple juice. I had the banana at about 10, and around that time I started eating the fire nuts, about two at a time. By 13:50, I'd finished the fire nuts and eaten 1 of the 3 slices of pineapple. I was stunned to report to my best friend Sandra, who's taking quite an interest in this experiment, that I was feeling completely full and wouldn't be able to eat a thing for the next hour at least.
So it's now 17:15. The pineapple is now gone but most of the cashew nuts remain uneaten. And the yogurt's still in the fridge.
My usual habit is to eat a banana at around 10. Then at 12 I have a (home-made) tortilla wrap containing iceberg lettuce, red onion, red pepper, rather a lot of Pizza Express salad dressing and tuna. By 16:00 I tend to be pretty ravenous and eat a yogurt to try to stave off a trip upstairs to the Talis staff tuck shop for the ever-tempting packet of Walkers crisp.
This previously vocal cynic of the whole Graze thing is starting to get impressed. I'm only slightly hungry, so I'm probably going to tuck into the yogurt. I might take the nuts to the pub.
Dave and I are having an austerity year - saving up to do everything that needs to be done around the house. Hence the home-made lunches. It's simply not an option to spend £3 a day on an ongoing basis. However, going down the Graze route for a month before our trip to France, land of eternally skinny women, is starting to look attractive. Would I spend £60 to lose half a stone before my holiday? This "pleasantly plump" Angl0-Saxon 40-something wouldn't hesitate.
