LET'S talk about goat meat. You may not think there's much one can say about goat meat – or what to do with it – but, oh, there is.

My colleagues and alleged friends will tell you I can talk at length about a galaxy of odd and trivial subjects (in my defence, what else is there to do when everyone around you is asleep?).

So, goat meat. No need to tell you it's the flesh of an animal called the goat.

Who eats it? Traditionally, people who live in the Caribbean (goat jerky is a favourite with Jamaicans) and parts of Asia. I'm not kidding – goat is believed to make up 80 per cent of the total red meat consumed in the world.

We think nothing of consuming goat's milk and cheese – so why not goat meat? After all, in Europe – and increasingly in the UK – horse meat, squirrel and even camel meat is being eaten more and more.

And the big selling point is that goat meat is healthy, containing fewer calories and less fat than most other meats, and a lot of foodies are using goat meat instead of lamb. In the Caribbean, India and Pakistan, the word 'mutton' is used to describe both goat and lamb meat.

Goat is easy to find on the menus at many so-called gastropubs and restaurants in London, including Jamie Oliver's 15 restaurant – and now leading department store Harrods has started to sell goat meat. The renowned Food Halls there are selling fresh goat shoulder at £19.95 a kilogram, so it's not cheap: but goat contains 122 calories per three ounces compared with 162 for chicken, 175 for lamb, 179 for beef and 180 for pork. It also has significantly less fat than all the other meats, at 0.79g per 3oz serving compared with 3g for beef.

Harrods sources the meat from Boer goats raised on a farm in Dorset.

If you want to try goat meat, there's a local firm – the Devon Goat Company at Tiverton – which has been raising goats for meat since 2002. Its owners, Roger and Lesley Prior, have been awarded silver under the Devon Wildlife Trust's Business Approval Scheme.

You never know; if goat meat does catch on here, we could become a nanny state in more ways than one.

In the 14th century, there were so many obese people around – especially among the ruling classes – that laws were brought in to curb eating habits.

Edward III decided that people were getting too fat and in 1336, he introduced laws banning anyone from having more than two courses at a meal – except on feast days when three courses were allowed: and that was just the upper classes. Workers, servants and peasants were allowed only one meal a day of 'flesh or fish'. Employers of servants were ordered to give their staff any leftover milk, butter and cheese.

The laws came under the heading Statute of Diet and Apparel. The legislation was an extension of previous laws aimed at cutting down on extravagance.

In the reign of King Edward II (1284-1327) a proclamation was issued against 'outrageous consumption of meats and fine dishes' by nobles.

Regulations varied according to a person's rank. Peasants and the gentry were subject to different rules, the main purpose of the laws being to mark class distinctions clearly and to prevent people from assuming the appearance of a superior class.

Some of these outrageous laws were short-lived. People thought up ingenious ways of getting round them — like saying that soup was a sauce and therefore did not count as a course — but many lingered on. Another King Edward — the Fourth — repealed some, but to help the fishing industry passed a law banning the eating of meat on Fridays and Saturdays and during Lent. In Elizabeth I's reign, the penalty for eating meat on these days was £3 or three months in jail.

England's laws on diet were finally repealed by Queen Victoria, not exactly a lean woman herself.

It strikes me as odd that it was the early King Edwards who tried to make people eat less – and now the King Edward potato is one of our most common foods. The potato was not introduced to England until 400 years or so after the reign of Edward IV; the King Edward potato was named to mark the coronation of King Edward VII in 1902.

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