Healthier choices

THE article ‘ Nanny state strikes again’ ( Mail) misinterprets the advice of Public Health England.

There has been no change to the guidelines on overall calorie intake at 2,000 a day for women and 2,500 for men and nor is the 400:600:600 advice new.

This has been in the literature for years as a rule of thumb of how many calories to aim for at breakfast, lunch and dinner, particularly when eating on the go, and recognises that many people also snack through the day.

What is new is that we are working with High Street food chains as they offer healthier choices and to help get across the message that many of the extra calories being consumed are out of the home. Given we are the

sixth fattest nation on the planet, this seems like a sensible thing to do.

We are absolutely not telling the public what to do, but to give them the facts, and one of these is that two-thirds of us are overweight or obese and this is largely to do with eating too much. DUNCAN SELBIE, chief executive, Public Health England, London SE1.