Mummy's Special Diet Biscuits & Other Acts Of Devious Brilliance

I must say, Twitter teaches you the most amazing things. At least, it teaches me the most amazing things. I really can't speak for you. For all I know you're not even on Twitter, which means it's not teaching you anything at all.

What's more, it doesn't always teach me especially amazing things - it often teaches me things that are fairy mundane or just mildly amusing. But that's beside the point too.

What is my point actually is - and I really do have one - is that the other day, I had a very interesting Twitter discussion with some of my online buddies. It was about food, as many of my discussions with my online buddies tend to be. (To be honest, many of my discussions with my real life buddies tend to be about food too. I guess I'm just really interested in food [which is fascinating, as I'm not interested in cooking at all]).

I had Tweeted about my surprise that I had not lost weight, despite a week on the Central Coast with my mum and kids eating very little other than hot chips and apple pie (and, you know, breakfast, lunch and dinner). I thought that chips were one of those foods that have negative calories - the more you eat of them, the less you weigh. Apparently I was wrong. Apparently it's celery (or kiwi fruit, or potato scallops - there was some minor controversy).

My Special Vitamins (half a dose)

This led to a mind blowing disclosure about the peculiar misconceptions other people believe, or perpetrate, about food. One Tweep, @ptmaree, told me about her friend who grew up being told that Kingstons were his mum's special diet biscuits, which made me stand up on my seat and applaud this genius woman whom I'd never met (or even knew the name of, apart from 'ptmaree's mate's mum').

Another, @propinqua, revealed that she tells her kids that Vita Weets are called Tim Tams, which demostrates a level of devious brilliance I had only previously suspected she had.

And then @duckformation - poor, tragic @duckformation - told us how her mother had always described fried eggs as 'special cheese'. She confessed that she had always had a difficult relationship with cheese since. Quite frankly, if I was her I would have had a difficult relationship with eggs, too. And my mother.

Happily, my mother inflicted no such cruelties on me, though we did regularly eat a 'meal' consisting of tinned tuna covered by mashed potato known by the improbably sophisticated moniker of 'Fish Pie'. I still can't be in a room with potato and tuna at the same time.

I have never, ever attempted to trick my kids, though. Of course, I tell them that my packets of dark chocolate bullets are my 'special vitamin pills' and my bottles of red wine are 'Mummy's health drinks', but that's not a lie at all. It's the absolute, honest truth.

And now I'm going to have some schnitzel. My husband assures me that it's the key to good health, and I want to do the best by my family.