It’s akin to finding the Holy Grail – an over-the-counter little blue pill that takes over where nature leaves off and does all the work for you.
No, that one.  What I’m referring to is the latest gimmicky slimming pill about to be mass-marketed in the UK by pharmaceutical giant Glaxo Smith-Kline under the curious name of Alli.
It will cost around ten pula per daily pill and according to the manufacturers, dieters should expect to lose between five to ten percent of their body weight in 4 months without any effort whatsoever and without changing their eating habits at all.  Sound too good to be true?  Well, it probably is.
Alli is a half-strength version of the prescription-only drug enical.  It works by inhibiting the body’s ability to absorb fat, which simply passes through the system instead.  However it also takes a lot of vitamins and nutrients with it so pill-takers are also encouraged to pop another pill or two in the form of vitamin supplements at the same time.
Even worse, it has some seriously antisocial side-effects, from producing excessive gas to what the manufacturers euphemistically describe as ‘an urgent need to go to the bathroom’ – diarrhoea to you and me.
It puts me in mind of British comedian Jaspar Carrot’s comments on the F-Plan diet when it came out many years ago – the one that revolved around a diet of beans, beans and yet more beans.  “No wonder they call it the F-Plan’, he said.  “It might make you slim but who’d want to go out with you?’
What puzzles me about the whole multi-million dollar slimming industry is that losing weight or putting it on is not a complicated issue.  Eat more, get fat, eat less, take it off - simple as that. Obesity is spawned only in societies where people have plenty of money and there’s plenty of food to be had.
In places of poverty and famine there’s no such thing as a fattie.  And yes, this pill is promising you that you can eat what you like and let you still lose weight but what it’s actually doing is removing a lot of the good stuff that we ingest the food for in the first place.  We need some fat every day for muscle maintenance and energy and we sure as hell need our vitamins for good health.  So you might lose a little weight but your body is going to suffer.
The Duchess of Windsor may have famously said, you can never be too rich or too thin but actually you can if you end up too sick or too dead as well. Anyway in an effort to push their dubious little product the makers of Alli conducted a little survey of British women, which concluded that they find the business of eating out very stressful.
They say they can’t assess the calorie-count of restaurant food and they’re tempted to eat more than they would at home and even hit the dessert trolley too. Oh, and Chinese and Indian restaurants are the most feared because their food is considered fattier than other cuisines. 
To all those sad survey ladies I’d say get a life and a sense of proportion, as opposed to food portion. Eating out is an occasional treat so who cares how many calories or how much is on the plate?  As for the pill-pushers, clearly they commissioned the survey to sell more of their little blue drugs so I assume they are encouraging those neurotic women to pop one before they pop out for the evening and the problem will be solved. Well, apart from the added greenhouse gases that may be emitted, that is, not to mention the unedifying sight of a restaurant full of female diners all suddenly taking off in a marathon rush for the nearest loo.  Might as well just flush the food down in the first place and cut out the middleman.  E-mail me dallasnash@yahoo.com