"A takeaway now and then is fine"

It is. This chapter agrees with the belief, and then asks what "now and then" means in your kitchen.

Louis Goffe and colleagues, using four waves of the UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey, found that adults who had takeaway meals at home at least once a week took in between about sixty and ninety more calories a day, averaged across the week, than those who had them rarely. That's a modest number, and it's a description of weekly takeaways, not nightly ones. I give it to make a point in the other direction. A weekly takeaway is a small thing, measurably. The research doesn't have much to say about the nightly one because it isn't a common enough pattern to study, which tells you something about how far from "now and then" the habit has drifted.

The word "fine" in the belief is doing two jobs. It's saying the takeaway isn't harmful, which at once a week it isn't, and it's saying that this takeaway, tonight, is one of the fine ones. The first is true. The second depends on last night. If last night was a plain plate and the night before was a plain plate, tonight's order is the now-and-then one, and it's fine, and it's also better, because a curry after two nights of pasta tastes like a curry. If last night was an order and the night before was a tray, tonight isn't now and then. It's the pattern, and the pattern is what this book is about.

So keep the takeaway. Keep it on purpose. Decide, at a time when you're not hungry, which night is the night, and have it then and enjoy it, and don't have the other five. That's not a rule about takeaways. It's a rule about defaults, and the takeaway that's chosen is the one that was never the problem.