Will one meal a day keep the flab at bay? JO HAYWOOD and CHRIS TITLEY get their teeth into the Des Diet.

IF women did it, it would be called a starvation diet. But for men, it seems that one meal a day could be the secret of eternal youth. Father-to-be for a fifth time Des O'Connor is 72 years old and still - ahem - going strong. He claims his vitality and youthful demeanour is partly due to his diet, a strict regimen of only one meal a day.

Cliff Richard, a frighteningly chipper 63 years old, is also a devotee of the Des Diet, as is Prince Charles, who revealed his eating habits to fitness guru Rosemary Conley when she visited Buckingham Palace to collect her CBE for services to the diet industry.

The Des Diet revolves around just one cooked meal a day. Des dieters can have a light breakfast of cereal and fruit, but then they remain a completely food-free zone until tucking into their evening meal.

A surprise follower of the one-cooked-meal-a-day routine is York Elvis impersonator Eddie Vee. He is a larger than life character; at 15 stone, some might say a bit too large, but he is happy with his girth and his daily diet.

"I've been eating like this for the best part of 14 years," he said. "I honestly don't understand how people can eat three meals a day.

"People always think I must eat a lot because I'm quite a rotund figure, but I don't. I don't eat much at all, and I very rarely eat between meals. I'll maybe have a chocolate bar every now and again, they're my weakness, but it's not an everyday thing."

Eddie has a bowl of cereal and something like a toasted sandwich for breakfast at about 9.30am, then he doesn't eat again until about 6.30pm when he has a cooked dinner along the lines of pork steak, chips and tinned carrots with a pot of tea.

Except for another cuppa at bedtime, that's it until the next morning.

"This kind of diet suits me," he said. "If I have a meal at midday I feel full and tired.

"I know that dieticians say you should have your main meal at breakfast time and a bowl of cereal for tea, but I don't fancy mashed potato for breakfast."

Eddie does not proclaim to be an expert in nutrition - he may be an Elvis-of-all-trades, but dieting is not one of his many fields of interest - but he does have a theory. Women, he says, are snackers, while men can survive on one decent feed.

"Women are different," he explained. "My wife can happily snack all day. Sometimes she doesn't have a proper meal for about three weeks. I am totally the opposite. I have my meal and that's it, I'm full.

"I don't understand how women, particularly young women, can snack all the time. I feel more comfortable with the way I eat.

"I just can't eat between meals. Look, we've been talking for ten minutes now, aren't you ready for a snack yet?"

This one-cooked-meal-a-day maybe called the Des Diet, but all that could change if Eddie gets his way.

"I've told a lot of people in the media about my way of eating over the years," he said. "Most don't believe me because I don't look particularly fit.

"Maybe I don't do enough exercise, but I'm not unfit. And even if I do exercise, I don't get any hungrier.

"I've always been open about just eating one proper meal a day. Maybe Des got the idea from me."

The meal-a-day plan is similar to the cereal diet, promoted by Kellogg's (who else?). This is already being tried by some of the women in the Evening Press office, who are eating one bowl of cereal for breakfast, one for lunch and a main meal at night. The difference with this is you can snack in between.

Dr Damien Downing, a former York GP and Evening Press columnist who specialises in nutrition, says there is nothing intrinsically wrong with meal-a-day programmes, providing that the meal is a good one.

"The bad thing for us is to have high carbohydrate, sugary-type foods. But this sounds like the very opposite of a junk food diet.

"There's not really a problem provided that the one meal - or the one-and-a-half meals really - is good."

Cereal and fruit for breakfast is an excellent start to the day.

"It's better firstly because it's giving you fewer calories than you would get from eating sugary snacks like chocolate or whatever.

"Secondly, they're spread more evenly through the day.

"You get a big spike of blood sugar after a Mars Bar, and a much flatter one after eating fruit.

"And thirdly, you are not only getting fewer calories, you are getting them in a less harmful way. And you are going to have the vitamins in the fruit that you wouldn't get in a Mars Bar."

So what about your evening meal? Well, first of all, you should eat it sooner rather than later.

"Having anything late on is the worst time to take your calories," observes Dr Downing. "Then they go on the hips."

As for the ingredients, stick to the basics. "You would need protein, oil and a limited amount of carbohydrates, as the cereal and the fruit you have already eaten is mainly carbohydrates.

"You are going to have to have lots of vegetables or salad, because otherwise you are not going to be getting enough micro-nutrients. Remember the World Health Organisation recommendation of five portions of green or yellow fruit and vegetables a day.

"You would also want to have some sort of protein: lean meat or fish. And then pretty much the rest is optional."

All the meal-a-day advocates are men: Des, Prince Charles and Eddie Vee. Does the lack of snacks make this a more male-friendly diet?

"I don't know whether it is because women need chocolate like men need beer," began Dr Downing - speaking psychologically, you understand.

"It's got a bit of masculine style to it: 'I am tough enough to get through on one meal a day - and that will be scorpions I have killed with my bare hands'."

He said the diet is, by implication, "semi-Atkins", eliminating the sugary snacks which are a major factor in the obesity epidemic, just like the famous Dr Atkins' plan.

"If you can do this then it's fine. It's principally the way to cut down on the amount you eat.

"Providing the food that you do eat is good and the sort of thing I have outlined, and providing you handle it okay, I don't see a problem in doing it."

Des, Charles and even our own Elvis, seem to thrive on it. Perhaps the mono-meal programme will be the new Atkins in our food-obsessed age.

Updated: 09:47 Thursday, April 01, 2004