WE LIVE in a time of plenty – and what we have plenty of is advice. What to eat, what not to eat, so much of this, a bit of that, not too much of the other. And to think, all eating once entailed was an open mouth and the insertion of whatever food lay to hand.

It might seem strange to say we have plenty in a time of economic gloom, but in historical terms we do. Never mind the credit crunch, most people still have their mind on the credit Crunchie – or, to keep matters local, the financial catastrophe Kit-Kat, perhaps.

We are bombarded with advice. I have lost the plot over whether red wine is good or bad, how much tea or coffee is beneficial, and whether butter beats margarine in the nutrition stakes.

Ultimately, all you can do is eat sensibly – apart from when you don’t. If the sensible days easily out-number the indulgent days, you should be all right.

Recent advice includes a ticking-off for celebrity chefs about creating recipes laden with “killer” fats, a move against the humble pie (with only reduced-fat versions to be available in Government-owned canteens) and a multimillion advertising campaign from the Food Standards Agency to encourage consumers to cut down on saturated fats (if you like hard cheese, hard luck).

If too much fat isn’t good for the heart, neither is too much advice about eating fat. My heart never feels heavier, the blood in my veins never flows more sluggishly, than when hearing yet another piece of Government food fussiness.

I know too many people are overweight, and recognise that “something must be done” – but is finger-wagging about butter and cream the solution?

For what it’s worth, I refuse to believe margarine is better for you than butter. How can a manufactured product, a suspension of various oils and additives, be better than natural butter? Handy to bake with, certainly. Useful on chilly mornings when too-solid butter tears the bread, maybe. But more healthful? I don’t believe it.

The assault on celebrity chefs comes from something calling itself The Fat Panel, which has released a report entitled The Guilty Secrets Of Celebrity Chefs. That title alone is a bit foolish. The supposed guilt lies in chefs such as Nigella Lawson and Gordon Ramsay using too much butter, cream and cheese in their recipes.

Well, that hardly constitutes a secret, does it? Celebrity chefs create recipes that the everyday cook would make once a year – if ever.

In fact, it is often said such high-end cooking is a form of food pornography. Something to be drooled over with illicit anticipation, but never actually cooked. So if these recipes are not being made, it can hardly be a problem.

Besides, more people are overweight thanks to eating rubbish prepared foods than making something from scratch as suggested by Nigella. Who defends her corner of the nation’s larder by looking like a living sculpture to the joys of creamy over-indulgence.

Too much of anything is bad for you, including advice. One piece of food advice I do like comes from an American journalist called Michael Pollan. I have seen this quoted once or twice by British columnists, so here it is, third-hand: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Seven sensible words. Pollan, who has written a book called In Defense Of Food, points to what he calls an American paradox: the more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become. Well, it’s a British paradox too, now.

We need to think of food just as that – food. Not a nutritional puzzle or a collection of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ elements caught in a battle to undo us. Or make us undo our trouser buttons.

Food keeps you going. Some of it tastes lovely. Enough keeps you healthy, a little extra is nice. Too much of the bad stuff makes you feel rotten. And, to echo Mr Pollen, here’s my own health philosophy: “Eat food, mostly good. Run. Drink at weekends.”