Having dinner with a boy you kind of like is exciting. Besides being nervous about whether you've got enough to tell, I also think it's quite complicated to eat something in a way that doesn't involve bit falling from your mouth, sauce hanging off your chin or turning your front teeth green. And looking at each other chewing only improves over time. Or am I exaggerating?

I did a round amongst my male friends asking what (not) to eat during a date, what's attractive about a woman's eating habits, and what's definitely not.

First of all, what should we order?

Dont's

• Don't take a well topped pizza. You just know that a small bite's enough to rip out the entire sliver of parma ham. Not okay.
• I'd hold the spaghetti. Okay, it's easy to eat when you cut it up first, but you're not supposed to eat it like this. You should preferably twist a fork against your plate. Chances are great you're still hanging over your plate, trying to get a spaghetti string inside. Not very charming.
• Don't order complicated salads with olives (roll all over the place), walnuts (had to pierce with your fork), and large leaves of lettuce. You just know beforehand that the dressing will be all over your mouth.
• We won't order spare ribs (I don't think lots of women mind this, but still). You won't make friends slurping and having dirty fingers.
• Prawns and lobster. No matter how good, it remains complicated to remove their jackets with shaky hands.
• Asparagus. They tend to leave behind strings upon biting and secondly, pardon me, your urine smells horribly afterwards. And I don't know, pardon again, what effect it has on that other thing.

Dos

• A simple piece of meat or fish with chips. It's easy to eat and little can go wrong. No chicken, by the way. If you're going to gnaw them it's going to be a mess. Chips you can eat with your hands.
• Risotto, easy, just with a spoon. Couldn't be easier.
• Sushi is also fine and healthy. Though you need to be able to eat with chopsticks.
• Sharing is great and fun. Don't go to a tapas restaurant, garlic all over.

Something I discovered quite soon is that men think it's absolutely not sexy if you only order some lettuce and a sparkling water. “I understand women want to stay in shape, but that doesn't mean living like a rabbit all the time. At dinner, just enjoy a simple meal and don't order complicated things like: sauce separate, rice instead of pasta, preferably not bakes in butter, but in olive oil.”

Look, allergies are of course exempt, but in general men don't like too much fuss. “Salads aren't fun. They're even incredibly unattractive, who eats a salad for dinner? A woman should just order a burger and drink beer.” Well, not all men agree on this of course. Well, they do on burgers. “Ladies that enjoy big bites of a delicious burger, the juice of the meat running down their chins, now that's attractive because they do whatever they feel like and a burger's best eaten when you're enjoying it to the fullest.” A friend of mine said.

“She especially has to enjoy the dinner and shouldn't act too complicated” I read on what's app. Not every guy thinks that a beer is attractive, I've noticed. “Tap beer isn't charming, that's a real guy thing. A corona beer is allowed.” Jeez, they don't necessarily try to make things easy for us, but clear it all is. But, in order to eat burgers and drink beer, we've got to go to the gym more often. Well, okay.