Let us use our own judgment on fast food

OK, I am confused – am I supposed to be stuffing my face with fast food to help stimulate the economy devastated by the Covid-19 pandemic?

Or should I shun such treats and try to lose some weight to reduce the pressure on the NHS and improve my chances of surviving the disease?

If you want some clarity on this it is no use looking to the Government to help – they are backing both contradictory strategies at the same time. It depends on which Minister you ask.

For example, next week Chancellor and Richmond MP Rishi Sunak is introducing his Eat Out to Help Out programme, under which diners get 50 per cent off their bills during the month of August, up to a maximum of £10 per person, on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays at participating restaurants.

I checked the Government’s official website to discover which eateries had registered for the scheme within five miles of my North Yorkshire home and there were no fewer than 53, including hotels, restaurants, tapas bars, pizzerias, numerous pubs, a fish and chip shop and a McDonald’s burger bar.

Fine, I well understand the urgent need to get the economy moving again and many of these establishments have been driven close to extinction by being forced to close for business for more than four months during the lockdown.

A timely taxpayer-funded boost to trade might be justified if it keeps these mostly small businesses afloat, thereby retaining much-needed jobs and keeping taxes coming into Government to fund essential services.

So there I am, all primed to head out for my half-price burger and large fries when, with crashing dissonance, along come other Ministers to give me a stern, finger-wagging lecture, warning that scoffing such unhealthy food is precisely what I should not be doing.

Boris Johnson, who has previously criticised so-called “sin taxes”, has apparently become a zealous convert to the virtues of the nanny state after admitting he was way overweight when coronavirus almost claimed his life.

The Prime Minister launched his Better Health campaign this week, which will ban junk-food adverts before the watershed, stop supermarkets displaying sweets at the checkout and ban two-for-one offers on high-fat products.

To add to our woes, something called the National Food Strategy produced a report lamenting the “slow-motion disaster” of our national diet and calling for more regulation to curb bad eating habits.

Written by Henry Dimbleby, cofounder of the Leon Restaurants fast-food chain, it lambasted Marks & Spencer for promoting its Percy Pig range of sweets with the claim they are made with fruit juice, when in fact the largest ingredient is sugar.

But hold on a minute. Can’t we credit people with a bit of common sense? Does any parent buy a packet of sweets thinking they are a healthy snack? You don’t let your children eat too many of them precisely because you know they aren’t.

I have never been to one of Mr Dimbleby’s restaurants, which promote themselves as serving “naturally fast food”, whatever that means, but I looked at the menu online. I quite fancied the fish finger burger (569 kcal) along with the sticky mango chicken wings (451 kcal), perhaps with a side order of cheesy loaded fries (311 kcal) followed by a raspberry donut (368 kcal) and a cup of hot chocolate (415 kcal).

But then I realised this would amount of more than 2,000 calories, almost the daily recommended total for an adult male, and if I carried on like that I would be morbidly obese.

The question for Mr Dimbleby is that if he can trust customers at his restaurant to make sensible choices when faced with an array of distinctly unhealthy options, then why can’t he trust the public at large to do the same thing?

People are not stupid and we shouldn’t treat them like children. Everyone knows that if you eat large amounts of food high in sugar and fat and don’t take sufficient exercise you will get fat and your health will suffer.

It is all a matter of judgment and proportion. An occasional Percy Pig sweet to comfort a crying child or a Friday night supper of fish and chips after a tough day is not going to do anyone any harm. But it should be up to individuals, not the Government, to make those choices.