As much as I love food, it has caused me its fair share of heartbreak and disappointment. Like any intense relationships, I guess, our culinary affairs have their ups and downs: we go to food for comfort, shun it when it goes cold, fantasise and indulge in its many pleasures… You get the point – I’ll leave the analogy at that. I’ve certainly suffered a lot of food-related heartache – thankfully not yet of the literal artery clogging variety. There was my discovery of low-fat hummus that revealed that standard hummus was not the epitome of healthy eating I had envisaged but was in fact a rather calorific snack option. There was the revelation that, while flavoured yoghurts may well have some calcium in them, they’re also packed with sugar, and don’t get me started on the not-so-innocent Innocent smoothies. A lot of this comes down to the preaching and myths that surround all things culinary.

Curvy croissants

In fact, the latest blow didn’t come in the form of yet another supposedly healthy food favourite turning out to be bad company but as a realisation of how I’d been doing it all wrong. Last week, Tesco announced that it would be discontinuing its curvy croissants and from now on selling only the straight variety. The news has sparked something of an outrage among French chefs and bakers. However, what the culinary geniuses are aghast at is not the shape itself (the true form of the croissant is a matter of debate) but the reason behind Tesco’s decision: the supermarket argues that straight croissants are easier for the British to cover in butter and jam.

The jam debate

But what’s the problem with that, I hear you ask. Take a deep breath and make sure you’re sitting steadily: jam and butter on croissants are a definite non non in la cuisine française. Richard Bertinet, the Bath-based French baker of Bertinet Bakery fame, seems genuinely puzzled by the butter debacle: “I don’t understand that. A croissant is full of butter already,” he commented to the Guardian. Another French chef, Jean-Christophe Novelli, was also far from pleased: “A croissant is something that you dip into a bowl of chocolate or coffee. But never in my whole life have I met someone from France who eats a croissant with jam.” And with this, part of my life shattered: I’d thought the French were the sort of people who believed in the more-butter-better-pastries dogma. But instead it turns out that all the times I’ve been leisurely buttering my croissants in my artfully arranged beret with Edith Piaf’s dreamy tones playing in the background have been nothing but a lie. Buttered croissants, we’re never ever getting back together.

Deadly bananas

It’s not all disillusionment and pain, though. On the rare occasion, my food fears have turned out to be unfounded and I’ve been reunited with culinary ex-lovers. Most recently, this happened with bananas (nothing Freudian going on here, I promise!). Type into Google any combination of ‘banana’, ‘safe’, and ‘too many’, maybe throwing in ‘potassium’ for good measure and you’ll be treated with riveting hits ranging from the blue-eyed ‘Is it safe to eat four bananas a day?’ to the rather more morbid ‘How many bananas does it take to kill you?’ (don’t even mention the cyanide in apple seeds saga). Now, bananas are a solid source of potassium, which, like so many chemical elements, is essential to life but lethal in extremely high doses (cardiac arrest would be the way to go in this case). With potassium chloride featuring in US lethal injections, it’s no wonder that there is so much banana-induced fear around; add to this the fact that bananas, precisely because of their potassium content, may trigger sensors at US ports used to detect smuggled nuclear material, and suddenly banana bread won’t be on the top of your dessert list anymore. I don’t like to admit it, but for a long time I restricted my banana intake to one a day in an effort to avoid a premature death.

Doing your research

However, doing a clever thing called using reliable sources reveals that you’d have to munch your way through 400 bananas a day to reach levels risking cardiac arrest. Even to reach your daily recommended intake of potassium (for a healthy person, kidney disease is a different story, sorry), you need at least seven and a half bananas. So, while I may have lost my buttered and jammed-up croissants, I’m enjoying getting back together with bananas. In yoghurt, porridge, muffins, on their own – this is a culinary reunion to be celebrated.

Yes, things can get tumultuous when dealing with all the hype, paranoia and rights and wrongs that surround food. But with food, as in life, there comes a point of ‘who cares?’. I’ve got my bananas back, and maybe one day I’ll proudly top my croissants with jam and butter. Or even peanut butter. But that might be too daring for now at least.