Super star-ved

Let's start with a degree of honesty here: we're all affected by the media imagery of the young, slender supermodel on the catwalk or the strapping muscled chap with the ridiculous bulge in his underwear. We are all under attack to conform to these modern ideals of beauty, and most of us try our best.

A year or so ago I was asked to lay on a lavish spread for a PR company which had invited a gaggle of supermodels to an opening night bash. I had to prepare 'macrobiotic canapes' (you need to be a rocket scientist to do this) and also to make an amazing Pavlova, which I did.

The canapes were grain-based and wheat-free - in fact, they were mostly free of anything at all. I worked with a nutritionist to calculate the exact calorie value and fat content.

What fat I saved went as a fat boost for a Pavlova with lashings of creme Chantilly and fresh wild berries.

Look but don't touch

It was like a Gaudi creation and indeed that's how it was treated: admired from a distance. They all wanted to take it home, saying it was 'too beautiful to eat' - a compliment, certainly, but I'd rather my food be eaten than praised and left untouched.

They hovered around it, looked longingly, prodded it nervously with a fork, then went back to their Marlboro Lights; all, that is, except two of them - and they were both pregnant. No wonder the A-list reproduce so eagerly: it's apparently the only time they get to have fun at the dinner table.

One of my clients, a model, was convinced that her trim post-baby body was due to breastfeeding, but it was probably more to do with the food I was asked to prepare: consomme, morning, noon and night. I made consomme of every imaginable and strange ingredient, - wild wood herbs, dandelions, marsh samphire and morels - punctuated with occasional doses of raw chilli to boost the metabolism of that heavenly body.

A lavish Christmas meal consisted of roast snipe (with the added difficulty of being out of season) while the rest of us were stuffing ourselves on turkey. Snipe is just about the smallest bird one can get (gamey and with zero fat).

A model's figure is, excuse the pun, her bread and butter, and when it comes to staying super-thin, even these symbols of the fashion ideal are themselves victims of fashion: the Atkins Diet, WeightWatchers, low carb, high protein, and of course, calorie-counting ad nauseam (oops! another unfortunate turn of phrase).

Life is boring if you are permanently on a diet - or in my case - if you are cooking for someone who is. And there are plenty of food regimes that don't require starvation or non-stop consomme.

A holistic approach

A far healthier fashion is macrobiotics, which is more a way of life than a diet; it's all about the relationship between body, food and lifestyle.

In a nutshell, this means eating more whole grains, beans and fresh vegetables, increasing the variety in the selection of foods, eating regularly and less in quantity, and generally maintaining an active and positive life and mental outlook.

Even more up-to-the-minute, and with certain similarities, is biodynamics: a holistic method of growing produce and rearing livestock that involves small farms which do everything, using the animals to fertilise the fields, then feeding those animals the grains they've helped to produce. Liz Hurley is apparently a fan, as is Kate Moss.

It seems even the super-thin (the sensible ones, anyway) are becoming aware that any diet that insists on eliminating entire food groups (and Atkins is a prime example of this) can, without supplements, lead to nutrient deficiency, and eventually to osteoporosis and problems with their immune system.

And surely anything, even a couple of extra pounds, is better than existing on smokes and Diet Cokes - even the kind of balanced diet that consists of one chocolate biscuit in each hand.