15 Jaffa Cakes*

Back in the foggy early days, when your darling baby first came into this cruel world, lots and lots of people came to visit. They all brought biscuits. Even though you were the size of a small beached whale, you ate all the biscuits because somewhere at the back of your mind was the vital piece of information that breastfeeding burned off 500 calories a day. And you’d been through childbirth. You deserved biscuits.

Eventually the people mostly went away, some time after that the breastfeeding may even have stopped or significantly reduced, but somehow the biscuit habit remained and now many months after the birth you are still the size of a beached whale.

This is where Jaffa Cakes come in. Jaffa Cakes have a measly 1g of fat in them and only 46 lovely chocolate-covered calories.

You do the math. There are 12 Jaffa cakes in a packet. 46 x 12 is 552 calories. If you are still breastfeeding, you could theoretically eat almost a whole packet a day and still be calorie neutral. Patently this is the thinking of a mad woman, but there is a logic in there somewhere.

If you aren’t breastfeeding - if not only that, but your toddler is walking, talking and possibly in pre-school - well we hate to be the ones to tell you, but perhaps it’s time to start think ing about eating some fruit. As well as the odd Jaffa Cake. We wouldn't expect you to give up pleasure in life entirely.

* Other orange-jelly based, chocolate-covered sponge biscuits are available.