Dame Prue Leith avoids breakfast and lunch when filming Great British Bake Off
Dame Prue Leith only eats teaspoons of cake per 'Bake Off' episode so she doesn't pile on the pounds.
The 84-year-old food expert took over from Dame Mary Berry, 89, as judge alongside Paul Hollywood, 58, when the programme moved from BBC One to Channel 4 seven years ago, and she has revealed she avoids eating breakfast and lunch to make way for her cake testing.
Speaking on the 'Crazy Sexy Food' podcast, she said: “It’s not a problem, because if you think about it even if there are 12 bakers in there and we’re judging the showstopper if I’m clever and I can get a teaspoon that gets a bit of icing, a bit of filling and a bit of cake, it’s only a teaspoon, so it’s 12 teaspoons. If you do that twice in the first day when we do the first two challenges and then once on the next day it’s not that much. But I don’t eat breakfast and I don’t eat lunch so basically I get my calories from the cake.
“Paul doesn’t get fat and he eats everything, including breakfast and lunch! Some people can just do it.”
Prue admits it's a very intense process to get on the show and the bakers are under immense pressure, even before they are filmed.
She shared: “I think that’s one of the great secrets of it. Because it’s taken really seriously, Paul and I want to see really perfect bakes, so the expectation is very high.
"The bakers, to get there, have had six months of intense practicing and competition and then finally sending it in.
"Getting through the process of actually getting onto Bake Off is enormously difficult, and there they are, they’re finally there and they don’t want to mess it up, they’ve spent six months of their lives getting there and they don’t want to mess it up.
“The tension grows during the series because they think, ‘My God, there is a chance that I could actually win.’ And of course any one of them could win. If you think thousands and thousands of people apply to Bake Off and you’ve got 12 which have been judged to be the best out of these thousands so of course they could all win Bake Off, they are all up to it. And they all know that, they know that they’re in with a chance so of course they’re very anxious and tense."
