I am one of those people who puts on 2kg if I so much as crave a pizza, look at a pasta dish or read a risotto recipe. As for bread, don’t even get me started! Bread and I have an unrequited love affair: I love it but, it does not love me back. I guess this is true of most people, carbs are the devil’s delicious work. It attracts us to it and it makes us bigger in all the wrong places.

I have just been on a short business trip to Trieste, Italy. In my view, Italy is the land of elegance, beauty, and majesty in all things from landscapes, to architecture, fine art, classical music and opera, high performance cars, all the way to yummy carbohydrate-rich diet.

Here is what I don’t understand: Apart from the late Luciano Pavarotti, why are Italians almost always thin? Apart from their devotion to coffee and wine, they make and consume prodigious amounts of pizza, pasta, risotto and bread on daily basis. This is not fair! As I walked around the elegant city of Trieste, I longed to see Italians rolling out of cafes, bars and restaurants looking like Micheline Man; not a bit of it. Every time I came across a slightly overweight person, they turned out to be tourists who probably arrived reasonably thin and within 48 hours piled on 20 kilograms enjoying the local cuisine.

Come on Italians, put us out of our misery and tell us how you do it!