Food rules are a gravy train for readers

THE Government’s anti- obesity adviser said she wants food policy to be subjected to the same tough regulations as the tobacco industry.

Professor Susan Jebb, of Oxford University, reckons all meals should be served with vegetables, snacking should be socially unacceptable and a fizzy drinks tax must be introduced if the obesity epidemic is to be tackled.

On the whole, I agree with Professor Jebb’s aims.

Britain is a grotesquely fat nation. I was watching a TV programme about the USA the other day where many of the visitors to an amusement park were so fat they had to get about on mobility scooters.

We are heading that way. Supermarkets already have mobi carts for their supersize customers to trundle around filling their trolleys with mountains of tuck.

Where Jebb is utterly, eye- wateringly wrong, though, WRONG: Professor Susan Jebb is her suggestion that it’s the government’s job to tell people what to eat.

When governments tell people what to do, it costs the taxpayer a fortune.

Leaflets

First they employ a raft of “experts” like Professor Jebb. Then they set up working parties who come up with guidelines explained in millions of glossy leaflets and in expensive TV ads.

And why the f** k should I pay more for a cream bun or a tin of pop just because the government wants to engineer us thin?

Where will this lead? Will we get a government that one day decides we should have blue eyes, or blond hair?

The trouble with people like Jebb and her fellow travellers is they preach government action, funded by the sweat and toil of the ordinary taxpayer, as the only way to get things done.

Beware! Every time someone calls for “government action” they’re really calling for more cash showered on “outreach co- ordinators” who read The Guardian like, I suspect, Prof Jebb.