PERSPECTIVE: Obey the Food Police? Fat Chance

I wouldn’t classify myself as fat, but according to my body mass index I am a teeny-weeny bit overweight.

I am still too young to be considered middle-aged but there is no escaping the fact I may be experiencing the first flush of a middle- age spread.

I don’t eat junk food, so I am able to deduce the following: 1. I need to reduce my nutritional intake; 2. I need to exercise. It took me under five seconds to formulate my action plan.

I do not have any qualifications in human science, diets or nutrition. I do, however, possess common sense. I do not believe I am alone in possessing such a quality – indeed it’s very name, ‘common’, suggests a lot of people have it too.

So why then is the Government going to such tortuous lengths to lecture the nation on what it should, and should not, eat?

Food manufacturers soon will have to produce a ‘traffic lights’ warning system for shoppers to warn them of the health risks posed by individual products.

Unhealthy foods with high levels of fat, sugar and salt will get a red label; nutritious, but high fat foods, such as cheese, will get an amber label; and fruit and vegetables will be green.

And here is the amazing conclusion of the labelling proposals: if you have too many smoky bacon crisps, chicken nuggets and fizzy pop (that’s red label foods) you will get fat and your teeth will rot.

But are people really so dim that they need to be told such unpalatable truths? And if they pay no attention to the maxim ‘you are what you eat’ then isn’t there a fair chance the ‘amber gamblers’ will also ignore the traffic lights, and drive straight through them on their way to Cardiac Central?

The only people who will pay any attention to the new labelling system will be the neurotic middle-classes, swinging as they do between Atkins, the Hay diet and blood group diets.

Dyed-in-the-lard fatties will barely pause for thought as they wheeze along the aisle towards the doughnuts.

Elsewhere, the white paper will propose the banning of junk food adverts until the 9pm watershed.

The move is based on statistics suggesting more than 70 per cent of viewing by children aged four to 15 takes place between 6pm and 9pm.

Adverts for burgers, crisps, fish fingers and some cereals will be adultonly viewing.

Captain Birds Eye will be banished from the screens until 9pm, the hour of abandon when viewers traditionally look forward to costume dramas, a spattering of bad language and soft core pornography.

Welcome to the hypocrisy of our victim-culture society where children are protected from the menace of a bearded pirate with a love of breaded cod portions – and exposed to the rapists, serial killers, drug abusers and adulterers who stalk the seamy world of EastEnders, Coronation Street and The Bill, all of which are broadcast before 9pm.

Sunny Delight might rot your children’s teeth but surely we should be equally concerned about parents who allow their offspring to feast on a TV diet that rots their children’s souls.

Food labelling is only a side order – the main course is shoddy parenting.