Closing fast food outlets is a fat lot of good

SIR – The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health wants fast food outlets banned within 400 yards of every school in the country, to tackle the obesity epidemic (report, April 23).

The authors of such reports may be well educated but seem to have no idea about the lives of the people they try to save from themselves.

There is no part of our lives that recent governments have felt they cannot interfere in, nudging us to do the right thing, according to their criteria. If that fails, they legislate to stop our nasty habits.

The only way to deny youngsters fast food without inconveniencing everybody else who lives near a school would be to restrict the sale by age, as with tobacco. But for some schoolchildren these places are their only source of supper. Not all parents cook for their children. But I guess the authors of the report do not know this. Margie Haynes

Colchester, Essex