Living in the UK has many advantages, particularly the variety of different styles of eating and food available to us.

The UK now has a large numbers of Chinese restaurants, take-aways and Chinese supermarkets. Many exotic foods are available, but I am sorry to say that our researcher could not find calorie counts for the birds nests and 100 year old eggs which were available in the Chinese supermarket.

So does the slimmer have anything to gain (in pounds) from eating Chinese style dishes. The answer always has to be yes - if you are unwary, but there are many foods which you can enjoy without a qualm.

Most Chinese foods are cooked very quickly in one of two ways - fried or steamed. Obviously steamed foods are brilliant, full of taste and flavour, being cooked in their own juices at high temperature. This preserves taste, flavour and texture and the cooking method adds no extra calories at all.

Frying is obviously different. Here the calories are added by use of fat. So deep fried foods are usually doubled in calories by the cooking method. Items cooked in this way are best avoided, such as spring rolls, battered prawns, pork or chicken, as served in sweet and sour dishes and the banana and pineapple fritters often served as a sweet. Special fried rice is also a 'No-No', the rice absorbs an enormous amount of oil during the frying process. Look out for prawn crackers too; you nibble away at them whilst waiting for your meal unaware that they cost you 15 calories each.

The Chinese method of 'stir frying' is an excellent cooking method to adopt. In a restaurant food is usually cooked at a very high temperature in a small amount of oil for a short time. Food is sealed as soon as it is put in to the oil and that, with the length of cooking time being so short, very little extra fat is absorbed by the food. So calories are kept to a lower amount. At home we can easily regulate the amount of oil used and a starving slimmer has a very speedy way of getting an appetising meal on the plate. Try 'stir frying' with a little stock and soy sauce rather than oil for low calorie results.

Beware also finishing your meal with a fortune cookie, which at 30 calories each will probably also tell your future is "to remain overweight always" unless you counted the calories as part of your treats allowance. But as we definitely don't wish our ladies to remain overweight, we hope the following guides will prove useful:-