That’s not the weigh to do it ...

TO COINCIDE with the nation’s Christmas excesses, Public Health England has cooked up an ill-thought-out assault on child obesity. Proposals include a limit of 544 calories for supermarket ready-meals, 1,040 for pizzas, and 951 for main courses in restaurants.

Food industry critics called the plans ‘insane, arbitrary and unscientific’. And those who view gorging yourself to death on cheeseburgers and buckets of sugary drinks as a freedom-of-choice issue are similarly incensed.

Yet the challenge is plain: one in four five-year-olds is overweight or obese, a figure which rises to one in three by the time children are 11.

Obesity costs the NHS £6.1 billion and rising. Obesity is so bad in Scotland – it’s the No 1 health problem – that oversized fridges have been installed at some NHS mortuaries to store bodies.

The proposals make no sense: cutting down on pizza ingredients or making sandwiches thinner is more likely to encourage snacking. For busy parents it’s tempting to resort to easy pizza dinners, which have the added bonus of being a guaranteed hit. The battle is not helped by the soaring cost of fresh vegetables, and the fact that junk food, especially takeaways, is so cheap and delivered via various apps in minutes.

A better long-term plan would be to force supermarkets to bring down veg costs; have simple yet nutritious recipe ideas in the aisles; and, most critically, teach our youngsters to cook easy, healthy meals as part of the school curriculum.

Aside from reading, writing and numeracy, knowing how to cook for yourself should be a compulsory life lesson.