WHAT women want is real food please.

After failing to achieve the ideal body on the latest gimmicky diet fad a vanilla flavoured vitamin and protein shake meal replacement, taken thrice daily, I have resolved to go back to basics in the kitchen and eat only home made meals. And that is where my problem starts.

Has anyone else noticed that fresh fruit and vegetables no longer taste of anything much at all really. What is the point of having EU regulation length, quality controlled curved bananas if they still only taste of a moist paste.

Strolling along most supermarket aisles is like walking through the pages of a glossy magazine advertisement. Everything is perfectly and uniformly sized, of identical colour and hue, impossibly shiny, often wrapped in plastic and disappointingly bland.

I have come to the conclusion that somewhere along the purification process, as they were washing off the soil, somebody stole the flavour.

Of course I could pay the extra for organic fruit and vegetables, but I object to paying for something which I think ought to be the norm anyway.

Usually you only pay for the services you use, not the ones you didn't, so why can't growers charge customers more to use pesticides and chemicals, rather than asking us to pay an extra tariff for them not to use these unwanted toxins and pollutants.

Technological innovations and better transport methods mean that we have become accustomed to eating fruits and vegetables out of season, but I think we would all enjoy a far tastier product if we were to limit ourselves to the selection nature intended.

The saddest part of it all is that food manufacturers then feel the need to top up our dinners with synthetic food flavourings, because the raw product is so tasteless.