Oversize Me

England's Olympic Squad

Britain is officially great, not economically or militarily, but when it comes to waist size we are in the first rank of flab. According to a recent survey, sixty percent of the UK's population are overweight; the other forty percent tried to eat the census taker...with chips and a  bottle of Lambrini.

Never fear though, Andrew Lansley, the health minister, is here to the rescue, proposing that we count the calories and display them in fast food restaurants. Unlike his Great Leap Forward for the health service, focusing our growing guts makes some sense. Although we may live as long as our grandparents, we will be doing so unable to leave the house without a flatbed truck and winch, reminiscing about the time we could see our feet without a remote camera.

Except we know lecturing people won't work. When a cigarette company marketed a brand called 'Death' with a skull and crossbones on the front, their  sales soared; the pack of 200 was even coffin-shaped. Back in the days when Tower Records existed, 'Death' had a display in their Piccadilly branch with skeletons and gravestones. I bought a pack at once and smoked it like cancer was just a star sign.

At American state fairs, stands advertise their high calorie wares such as deep fried butter with a picture of   paddles they use to shock a stopped heart; the public loves it. Humans seem to be hard wired to crave sugar and fat, a relic of our wandering days on the savannah. Unfortunately, what makes sense for hunter-gatherers who rarely if ever encounter sugar or fats is a bad strategy for desk-bound office potatoes whose sole exercise is moving a computer mouse or other mono-hand pursuits. Maybe if you did have to dodge marauding lions on the way to KFC you would burn up the calories, but all it would take is one fatal mauling and the scheme would have to be abandoned. Health and safety gone mad.

There are, however, other ways to fight the obesity crisis that don't involve releasing large carnivores into urban areas or lecturing people like naughty children. Try limiting the number of fast food outlets in the high street. Insist that every outlet be located at the top of a steep hill or fitted with running machines at the entrance, like that Ok Go video except with annoyed customers.

Install this in front of every junk food restaurant.

Do not, repeat do not get the likes of Cadbury's to sponsor some retarded idea of exchanging chocolate bars for sporting equipment, making the direct association in children's minds of junk food with athletics. Oh hang on, that's exactly what the Blair government did.  Learn the lesson of that mistake and do not what ever you do make official sponsors of the 2012 Olympics the likes of Coke or build the largest ever McDonald's in the world at the Stratford site. Oh hang on...

The same government and local authorities lecturing us on calories are busy turning every high street in Britain into one uninterrupted branch of Subway-KFC-Pizza Hut-McDonalds-Burger King-Greggs-Chicken Cottage -Kombo Feeding Warehouse. It's not the calories that need counting. After all, how many branches of Subway does the world need? The answer is any number less than one in case you're interested.

Now, where's that takeaway?