More about Slimming World

I was going to add this to today's food post but I accidentally (oh, OK, carelessly) posted it yesterday so this is a separate post.

I've mentioned the free food and the healthy extras.
The other part of the plan is those syns.
Now, the book they give you goes on about it being short for synergy, blah, blah, blah, but I can tell you that I am old enough to remember when they were called 'sins' and they were exactly that - bad food!
Then it became unpopular to think of food as good or bad, it was all about balance so SW cunningly changed the name to syns and said it was short for synergy - yeah, sure.  And that's one reason why I dislike the name really.

The book says that synergy is when things work together to produce a result that is greater than the sum of the individual parts so syns work with free food and healthy extras to make the SW system 'the most effective plan ever!' (their words)

Anyway - what are Syns?  They are all the other foods and drinks in the world that aren't free foods or healthy extras.
All these have Syn points and I am expected to have between five and fifteen syns each day.  So when I want a bit of extra cheese on a dish, I can have it and syn it.  The lower fat Cathedral cheddar that I quite like is 4 syns for 25g, for example, and (opening the book at random) a cod steak in breadcrumbs is 8 1/2 syns.
So theoretically, you could have anything in the world and syn it.  As long as it is (for me) between 5 and 15 syns, it's OK.  If you're heavier, you have more syns and if you are male you have more too. 

So there you go.  That's syns (shudder) for you!