IT'S GONE POLITICAL - WE'LL NEVER HEAR ANYTHING SENSIBLE ABOUT IT EVER AGAIN!

June 25 2006: In the papers today are fresh stories about outline proposals to limit by law the degree of fats and sugars in certain foods. This "Slimming by Statute" movement has been getting up quite a head of steam over the last year or so. This attack from the Left points its accusing finger at its usual bogeymen - Big Business, in this case the unscrupulous leviathans of the international food industry. Even better should they be American, the likes of the McDonalds and the KFC's of this world stand accused of seducing us into obesity.

And the Right has its own viewpoint - only stupid, weak, selfish people get overweight (unless, like the authors, of course, they are clever and middle class and then it is down to personal choice if they happen to be overweight, or else the result of quite overbearing and uncontrollable circumstances). Have you seen the flurry of opinion pieces? It's all down to that old champion of the Right - Free Will (for which one might cycnically say, read the the choices born of information and economics).

So that's the political landscape of the overweight debate staked out in the UK - it's either the nasty American junk food peddlers, or the nasty, silly people who haven't any self-control. Thank you, boys and girls, for these informed, intelligent and useful contributions!