I have a love/hate relationship with food.

The anorexic mind is obsessed by food.

Diet culture is dangerous and contributes to my unhealthy thoughts around food. Not only do I have an excessive concern about what I eat, but I also have an unhelpful fixation on what other people are eating.

Anorexia likes to punish me for eating.

Likes to make me feel as though I’m eating too much (and more than everyone else).

I hate eating in front of others when they are not eating.

I find it difficult to eat when people are watching me.

I like to think that other people are eating more than I am.

If other people are eating more than I am then it gives me permission to eat.

I like the things I eat. The things I feel comfortable eating. The things I know are healthy. I care about what I eat. I enjoy cooking and spend hours preparing meals for myself. I cherish mealtimes, eating slowly to savour what I eat. Eating on the go is not for me. Listening to podcasts on the go is very much my game.

Comfort Eating with food critic Grace Dent is one of a select group of ‘safe’ food related podcasts that I listen to. The premise of the podcast is to “pay homage to the lesser celebrated foods in life”. Dent believes “you can tell a lot about a person from what they eat behind closed doors”.

Each week Dent invites a celebrity guest to her house and asks them to remove a tea towel from their chosen comfort food and share it with her, along with their food related stories and memories. Typically, an episode will begin with Dent getting ready for her guest. She’s likely to be having a snack. Perhaps a slice of buttered toast spread with Biscoff. A fig roll, or maybe a babybell with kimchi.

We are not in the world of Masterchef here.

True to her word, Dent embraces the weird and wonderful inventions that her guests serve her. Forget ‘balanced diet’ and the ‘five portions of fruit and veg’— this is a place where full-fat salad cream, and slabs of salted butter are favoured over ‘lighter’ and ‘low-fat’.

She particularly enjoyed the macaroni cheese and garlic bread served to her by Lawrence Chaney.

Was surprised that Jo Brand’s fried bread sandwich with brown sauce ‘worked’.

And after Russell Tovey served her Kellogg’s Froot Loops, a very sweet cereal, she found herself ordering a box of the American cereal that is hard to find in the UK.

The sharing of these most humble foods encourages a generous sharing of stories between Dent and her guests. And it’s not just small talk.  Some challenging topics crop up. There is a warmth to the conversations.

Fern Brady and Cat Burns talked about being diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Adam Kay and Tom Watson discussed their struggles with disordered eating, and Marian Keyes revealed how baking helped her through depression. No matter how difficult the topic, there’s a generous portion of laughter sprinkled on the top.

No meal has been the same. Whether you get your serving of comfort from scrunched-up Wotsits’ crumbled over beans on toast, or by adding a spoonful of raspberry jam to rice pudding and eating it from the tin— to my ears this juicy and meaty podcast is always a reliable source of pleasure.

Grace, I’m waiting for my invitation!