Kate Moss is in trouble. Again. This time she has been accused of encouraging teenage girls to become anorexic after claiming she lives by the motto: "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels."

Her comments have stirred media hysteria and moral outrage, with television presenter Denise Van Outen leading the witch hunt.

"Kate Moss is talking out of her size-zero backside," she fumed. "She knows the impact her comments will have on vulnerable young women." Van Outen seems to have forgotten that she shared her diet secrets with just about every British red top last year.

I'd be inclined to agree with Moss. Somewhat. I'm assuming she hasn't savoured the pleasures of a Big Mac the morning after the night before or a puttanesca paired with a great, big swirling goblet of Beaujolais . . . However, slim -- not skinny -- tastes damn good too.

Life is easier when you're at your optimum weight. You look better. Clothes hang better; more to the point, clothes fit. It's good for the head space. Carrying excess weight is extra mental baggage. When I gain an extra stone or two, losing it becomes an obsession. It sits tacitly at the top of the to-do list. There are constant reminders too: the jeans that won't close; the cardigan tied around the hips to cover the landslide that was once my bottom and the red line that etches itself into the mid-section of the stomach thanks to the extra rolls of adipose tissue. Who wants to be fat?

For all the po-faced pontifications that Moss's comments have roused, I defy any woman who says she hasn't struck a chord. The pursuit of being slim is at the top of most women's agendas -- it's only in the size-zero era that it has become un-PC to voice it.

Helen's Fielding's fictional character Bridget Jones became the voice of a generation of women thanks to her hilariously self-flagellating diary entries which listed her weight each morning. The authors of the Skinny Bitch diet were lauded for their tongue-in-cheek and searingly frank style.

Elsewhere, we have Special K advising us to swap meals for a bowl of cereal and slimming clubs proposing calorie counting. Aren't they propounding the same message?

It might have been different had Moss used the words "slim" or "slender". Nobody should strive towards skinniness -- it is as unattractive as being overweight. Even so, despite the connotations of the word, don't we all use it to congratulate a woman who has lost weight? We use diet mottos too: "A minute on the lips; a lifetime on the hips" or "little pickers wear bigger knickers".

Ultimately, they all boil down to the same premise: nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. Those who are outraged need only ask themselves if they ate what they really wanted for lunch today.

- Katie Byrne