Vegetable and Fruit options at Brasserie Restaurant, Mercure Hotel, near Watford

I give full marks to the Brasserie Restaurant at the  Hotel Mercure near Watford for providing lots of vegetables and fruit. If you are not a health fanatic, you can opt for the fattening food and find lots of batter and and sweet desserts.

However, if you are trying to eat a healthy diet, the vegetables and fruit are there. For example, the starters include goat's cheese and beetroot. This can also be served as a main course. See the menu on the hotel website.

One of the dessert options is fruit and a marshmallow on mini wooden skewers. My group of eaters included those who had done lots of sport and had hearty appetites, and couch potato types who had been sitting and although they liked sugar knew they shouldn't eat it and should be on a sensible diet with lots of fresh fruit and vegetables.

Gone are the days in the 1960s when every restaurant in shopping centres and hotels offered a fruit salad with custard or cream. Now the fashion is for made up sugary desserts. Here at the Brasserie, with a bit of nifty mixing and matching, you can have marshmallows dipped in white and brown chocolate, or entirely fruit. Of stick to what they have given you, a combination in which the acidity and freshness of the fruit counterbalances the overload of sugar.

Does anybody want to join me in a campaign for bring back fruit salads? No? We are all too busy. It's the government's job. In that case, let's just have fruit salad at home and go back to restaurants like the Brasserie which offer a proper portion of cubed fruit with the dessert.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer, photographer, author and speaker.