In these days of voter apathy and eroded social solidarity, politicians seem to believe that the last vestiges of their beleaguered credibility rely on preaching the gospel of cost-cutting (which is one of the reasons why reports on their expenses, voted through pay rises and more than generous pension entitlements never fail to make them squirm). Tellingly, the vocabulary they employ draws on the imagery of dieting: slim or trim down, removing flab, becoming lean and mean. More and more the value of human life is portrayed as depending on whether the individual in question contributes to or constitutes a drain on collective resources (by which I am referring primarily to the health care systems, since the physical survival of every last one of us, fat or thin, inevitably relies on consumption). We have drifted into the era of the bean-counter where “rationalisation” and “efficiency” rule and there is no room for compassion, for ordinary frailty, for variety of experience, where the elite playfully cast off the constraints of convention leaving the rest of us trapped within boundaries more hopelessly than before, where mobility is held up as the greatest good, masking the depressing fact that fewer and fewer are able to benefit from it.

It is no coincidence that euthanasia and denial of treatment to prematurely born children have become the latest hot topics on the liberal agenda. After all, killing off the terminally ill or ultra-dependent at either end of the life course would save enough to warm the cockles of any accountant’s heart. Dominic Lawson (The Independent, 14^th November 2006) eloquently cautions us about the dangers of being seduced by budget-pruning rhetoric dressed up as the epitome of disinterested rationality in Doctors, disabled children and euthanasia: “There seems to be a great confusion about what constitutes ‘a very ill child’. Many of the conditions which are frequently spoken of as illnesses are nothing of the sort. A person born with a severe physical handicap is not physically sick. A person with a mental handicap does not have a mental illness. In neither case is there anything to be cured.

A baby born with Down’s syndrome is not ‘suffering’ from anything. Accordingly, it could never correctly be described as a compassionate act to do anything to bring about the end of such a life. At the risk of sounding harsh, I think it is necessary to state clearly that those who wish to make it easier to destroy such lives are not thinking about the interests of the child: they are thinking about the interests of the parents.

The more interesting question is: how clearly are parents in such a situation able to assess their own future? As I know myself, when you are told that your newborn child has some kind of genetic abnormality, you are in no condition to make any sort of decision, still less one involving life and death. Most prospective parents have a horror of having a child with Down’s syndrome: but there are few, who, having had such a child, are not fiercely protective and loving”.

The anti-democratic rot has already set in when it comes to health care, however. Smokers struggling for their every breath are greeted with a shrug of indifference and a smug “Well, we did warn you and yet you kept on lighting up with your filthy yellow-stained fingers forty times a day”. Do not delude yourself: after the nicotine-puffers and alcohol-swiggers we are next in line to be sent packing on the grounds that our woes were self-inflicted. Your passion and vibrancy, your fury and creativity count for nothing. You are a statistic (an abstraction as worthy of pity as the random passers-by Harry Lime sneers at from his vantage point on the Riesenrad in The Third Man, as opposed to a real individual in flesh and blood glory, complete with foibles, blemishes and all), a burden, a nuisance, a throwback, a roly-poly degenerate, an uncomfortable reminder of the propensity of the human body to lay down reserves for times of hardship in the midst of unprecedented abundance.

We are already subject to a sustained attack in the realm of non-essential therapy. Maxine Frith reveals that beyond the much-publicised waiting lists for hip operations, rationing is the order of the day (The Independent, 9th October 2006), in Almost all NHS trusts fail on IVF pledge: “The financial crisis in the health service means that many trusts are cutting back even further on IVF provision, denying thousands of couples the chance of a family and resulting in a postcode lottery of care.

At least four PCTs have suspended all fertility treatment provision in the past six months, while others have cut back on the number of cycles and many have introduced restrictive criteria that make more couples ineligible.

Some trusts now have waiting lists of five years for treatment, by which time the success rates for many women will have plummeted because of their age”.

Decisions are taken on the basis of how neatly the recipient fits into a pattern of social “desirability”: “The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) ruled in 2004 that all PCTs should offer three cycles of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) to couples [note that the author does not specify whether these are nuclear-families-in-waiting – we are invited to fill in the gap, however, and assume that they are].

Nice set a small number of eligibility criteria, including that women should be between 23 and 39, and couples should have either a proven fertility problem or have been trying to conceive for three years”.

The gulf between the Government’s vision of what should be on offer and the reality yawns wide: “Four trusts have suspended treatment since May because of budget cutbacks and new patients in their areas cannot be referred for or receive treatment (…)

Two thirds of trusts – 68 per cent – offer just one IVF cycle per couple and 17 per cent provide funds for two cycles. Just six PCTs offer three cycles, but these trusts also have some of the longest waiting times for new patients. Only three of the trusts not yet providing three cycles said they had plans to reach the standard, and two of those did not intend to achieve it before 2010”.

Returning to the standardised eligibility criteria for a moment, who is likely to fall into the category of having “a proven fertility problem”? According to a piece in the Daily Mail (4th September 2006, unattributed), Fat men ‘are 10% less fertile’: “Men’s fertility is ‘significantly reduced’ if they are overweight, research revealed yesterday.

Carrying just an extra stone and a half can cut the chances of being able to father a child by 10 per cent, scientists found.

And being obese halves the odds, according to a study of 1,468 couples in Iowa and North Carolina published in the journal Epidemiology.

Last week it was suggested that obese women should be denied IVF treatment because they have less chance of conceiving. But these findings reveal that men’s fertility is also affected by extra weight – which it is thought affects sperm quality and causes hormone problems.

Adjusting the figures for other factors, such as smoking and alcohol consumption, the scientists concluded that ‘the men’s Body Mass Index was an independent risk factor for infertility’”.

Julie Wheldon (Daily Mail, 6^th October 2006) picked up on the theme in Obesity could be the biggest threat to female fertility: “Obesity in women is threatening to cause a fertility crisis, doctors warned yesterday.

More than half of women attending fertility clinics are overweight but often unaware of the damage it is doing to their reproductive health, said experts.

With obesity rates forecast to rise to 70 per cent within a decade, doctors warned that the problem is a greater threat to fertility than the sexually transmitted disease chlamydia or conditions such as polycystic ovary syndrome.

Not only are severely overweight women more likely to struggle to conceive, they are more prone to complications in pregnancy and having babies with birth defects.

Professor Adam Balen of the Leeds Reproductive Medicine Unit said typically more than 50 per cent of women attending UK fertility clinics are overweight.

By comparison around one in three are there because of damage to their fallopian tubes – often triggered by chlamydia.

‘The overall percentage of women who attend infertility clinics with obesity is certainly greater than the number who have tubal damage due to chlamydia,’ he said.

‘The issue of obesity is of major significance to infertility clinics’.

More than half of all women are classed as overweight, a figure which experts say could rise to 70 per cent within ten years. Obesity levels are also soaring among the young, with 27 per cent of girls and 22 per cent of boys overweight.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists is so worried about obesity it has devoted a special issue of its journal BJOG [British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology] to the problem.

Editor Philip Steer, of Imperial College London, said many women and even doctors do not fully understand the impact of weight on reproductive health.

‘Maternal obesity needs to be recognised as a serious and growing health problem,’ he added.

The journal revealed how obesity increases the severity of polycystic ovary syndrome, which can make it hard for a woman to conceive.

Obese women who do conceive are more likely to have pre-eclampsia, suffer a miscarriage or require a caesarean than those of normal weight.

In addition their babies face a greater risk of birth defects and having obesity problems themselves as they grow.

The RCOG said yesterday it is convening an expert group to discuss how best to manage the problem.

Professor Balen, who edited the special edition and is also part of the expert group, said: ‘We need to be tackling the problems of obesity in childhood in order to reverse the trend that is leading to increasing rates of infertility and health risks in pregnancy to both mother and baby’.

This summer the British fertility Society was heavily criticised for suggesting that obese women should not receive IVF treatment on the NHS.

It said they should not be granted funding unless they have made efforts to lose weight.

The society also advised that women classed as severely obese should not get funding at all until they have reduced their weight.

Critics claimed this was ‘unjustified discrimination’.

Last week, a study suggested that women who fail to shed even a little weight gained in pregnancy face a higher risk of birth complications with their next baby”.

In other words, it is precisely the least fertile segment of the population that faces the prospect of being turned away (ostensibly) on grounds of a reduced likelihood of success. If we were considered to have any intrinsic worth this would not be allowed to happen. Instead, our feelings and aspirations are casually and callously brushed aside in a calculation that is entirely blind to the wish to lavish love on a wanted child. The medical establishment has done its level best to undermine our self-confidence, to browbeat us into conformity with the slenderness ideal with its ever-lengthening list of fat-related complaints and conditions (which most of us can recite effortlessly, having been reminded of them by a Greek chorus of friends and relatives, exasperation quivering in their voices as they bewail our impending doom in the guise of caring as well as by the media and the diet vultures circling relentlessly above). Our presumed ignorance and bloody-mindedness have kept us from shedding the pounds. Ostracism and ridicule have not eradicated us. Now the social deviance (literally) embodied in fatness is being classified as a genetic defect.

Consider the following report by Jonathan Thompson and Renee Knight (The Independent on Sunday, 5^th November 2006), Eggs for sale, The booming business of sharing your fertility: “Victoria describes herself as ‘fun loving, generous and considerate’. The 29-year-old blonde is ‘naturally slim with good bone structure’, and an accomplished ballet dancer.

Danielle, 26, has wavy chestnut-coloured hair and blue eyes. A teacher by profession, she is ‘tall, athletic and outgoing’, and also a part-time model.

These are not adverts on internet dating sites. Victoria and Danielle are just two of a rapidly growing number of young British women rushing to cash in on the latest way to make money: the egg donation business.

The sale of eggs is illegal in this country, but in America, the industry is worth an estimated $4.5bn (£2.4bn). Donors with the right physical, personal and intellectual attributes can attract fees of up to $35,000 for their eggs, with some in the industry claiming that as much as $50,000 has changed hands. Prices are rising, too: in New York, average eggs are fetching $8,000. About 15 years ago, the comparable figure was closer to $1,000”.

What I find offensive here is not the sale of ova, but the stress on appearance with the implicit suggestion that intelligence and creativity are still unimportant attributes for a woman (presumably residing exclusively in the thrashing-tailed sperm) and, more particularly, that slimness is the would-be donors’ greatest asset, their strongest selling point.

Of course, unadulterated snobbery is also a factor. We can’t have the lower orders turning their much-reviled fecundity to pecuniary advantage, now, can we?: “‘In Britain, we have a culture of altruistic donation,’ said John Paul Maytum, a spokesman for the HFEA [Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority]. ‘There is always a concern when you start paying large amounts of money for eggs, because it will change people’s motives for wanting to donate. If payment is attracting people desperate for money, it also raises questions about the quality of the eggs’” [according to this stunningly elitist logic the inferiority of the poor sullies their very genes, any well-meaning initiatives to improve their wretched lot are a complete waste of time and effort as fecklessness, indolence and underachievement are transmitted from one generation of wasters to the next; no talent can ever reside in such tainted matter, there is no point in wasting opportunity on scum, their plight is deserved, their natural inheritance].

The short insert demonstrated most clearly just how unwanted we are (along the lines of no one in their right minds would want a fat child, especially not if they are shelling out good money for a designer baby), We need to check your weight first: “Eggdonor.com is one of a number of US websites advertising eggs for sale to infertile couples, including eggs from British women. Prices can reach up to $35,000 for donors with desirable physical characteristics, good medical histories and proven academic records. Prospective buyers are shown recent pictures of the donors, as well as images of them as babies and adolescents. They also analyse everything from their height and weight to details of their grandparents”.

I am no peddler of simplistic conspiracy theories to the effect that the accumulation of fat is set to be deliberately and maliciously eliminated from the gene pool (even if it were possible to engineer out such a deeply ingrained trait to which we owe our survival as a species), but we are treated as pariahs in the reproduction stakes as it is (to be flippant for a second, if the chances of conceiving indeed drop in proportion to padded curvaceousness then give me the cream bun and fish supper method any day rather than the noxious chemical preparations we are encouraged to swallow without a second thought) – we might know we are sexy as we slip into our glad rags and more so than the gaunt clothes horses with their dangling arms and washboard ribs, but who lets us be? Our voluptuousness was once revered and worshipped. These days the Venus of Willendorf provokes shudders of revulsion. We are not heading for genocide, but are sliding into even less tolerance in a context that bristles with hostility as it is. Where finger-wagging prejudice is able to set the public policy agenda limiting our access to IVF, more aggressive interventionist steps could follow.

Perhaps we will be segregated from the “normals” or forcibly enrolled in fat camps on starvation programmes. The barbed words of one colleague still ring in my ears over a decade after they first tore into me. I issued the customary protestations about having normal blood pressure and low cholesterol (both of which still hold true) and that I was perfectly comfortable with my size. Her retort: “Yes, but we have to look at you”. The powers that be are contemplating the removal of “yob neighbours”, those who have attracted persistent complaints concerning anti-social behaviour into “sin bins”. The qualm-free sacrifice of the human rights of “underclass” families not prepared to buckle down and accept their lowly station through gritted teeth for the sake of upholding the rights to a quiet life on the part of the rest, a cheap solution compared with tackling poverty, chronic inequality, deprivation and the absence of genuine opportunities and prospects that lie at the root of such sullen and futile rebellion (we can’t alienate the middle-classes by putting up the council tax yet again, after all). Once the principle of ghetto-creation for the undesirables has gained acceptance, the definition of undesirable can be expanded at will. “But they are so gross, so ugly with their bulging bellies. They spill over the arm rests on the plane, they glisten with sweat whenever the sun so much as peeps out from behind the clouds, I can’t bear the sight of them, besides, they lower the tone of the neighbourhood and bring down the property value, couldn’t you just get rid of them?” Fat catchers patrolling the streets to round up those who have not yet been relocated and have broken the curfew (daylight hours, when our allegedly lumbering gait might cause distress, “Pass me the smelling salts, Archibald, I’ve just spotted a slob!”). Perhaps in the end the diet industry will save us. After all, if skinniness were the norm outside of glamorous celebrity enclaves where would its profits come from? Fattening us up again?

Mind you, we are slowly but surely gaining the upper hand in terms of sheer numbers (not that I am naïve enough to think that being in the majority counts for much, as indicated by the frustrations of womanhood in a world where maleness is still the default option with all the privileges such an exalted, power-saturated state of being brings in its wake), as Sarah Boseley (The Guardian, 11^th October 2006) shows in her Fears for the future as figures reveal Britons are the fattest people in Europe: “Britons are the fattest men and women of Europe, beating Slovakia and Greece by a small margin and with every likelihood that the next generation will hang on to the title, if current trends continue.

Being overweight or obese is now the norm in the UK, with figures released by the government yesterday showing that two-thirds of men and almost 60% of women are unhealthily heavy. We are also passing on the problem to our children: if nothing changes, nearly a third of boys and girls under 11 will be overweight or obese by 2010”.

She continues: “The figures from the OECD, comparing the UK with 21 other European countries, emerged in a government document detailing the state of the nation’s health, what has been achieved, and targets for the future.

Offsetting such success stories as the drop in cancer and heart disease deaths are the worrying upward trends in obesity and diabetes, mental ill-health and alcohol-related disease.

Caroline Flint, the public health minister, said that the UK led Europe in obesity for a combination of reasons, some of which were cultural and associated with shopping and family habits.

‘It has built up over time,’ she said. ‘In the last 10 years or so, things seem to have got worse. It is partly what we eat but also what we do in terms of physical activity. It is complex. It is part of the way we live our lives and we have to think of 21^st-century solutions’.

The government has set itself the target of halting the year on year rise in obesity among children under 11 by 2010. But it does not set a similar target for stopping the weight gain in adults, aiming instead to encourage people to ‘want to change their lifestyles and take responsibility for their health’.

Ms Flint said it was not part of her job to tell people what to do.

Instead, the government is looking towards incentives, such as a voucher scheme offering money off fruit and vegetables being tried out in Cornwall, and more subliminal approaches.

Next spring it will launch an obesity ‘social marketing strategy’, based on the most effective ways of targeting messages to particular groups.

The result of one such piece of research was anti-smoking adverts warning young people that the cigarette habit would leave them looking wrinkled and damage their sex drive.

She expressed hopes that supermarkets would help the crusade, showing parents how to prepare exotic fruits and vegetables in-store and allowing children to try them: ‘Parents are worrying about buying food in case the children aren’t going to like it. We have to be better at listening to people rather than assuming we know what they need’”.

What bemuses me about the idea of squandering money on an awareness-raising deterrent campaign is the underlying assumption that we are not being chivvied, bullied and bombarded from all sides with messages about jeopardising our well-being for the sake of the transitory melting sensation of chocolate on the tongue as it is. Only a thin person in a cushioned environment without a single fat acquaintance (who has been called names throughout childhood and whose hard-won, minimal confidence has been punctured repeatedly in adulthood by casual remarks) could imagine that an extra portion of moral blackmail might sway the recalcitrant pie-guzzler into casting those crusts aside. Here sheer, mind-boggling ignorance combines with prejudice to dream up a plan that will only increase our humiliation, pain, suffering, anxiety and self-recriminating guilt whilst further exonerating those who derive their kicks from picking on us by pretending that fat is a lifestyle pathology, the physical manifestation of a moral flaw (lack of willpower and discipline), heaping all the blame on the individual and blithely glossing over every other contributory factor (I do not subscribe to the fat spells misery and disaster ideology).

Martin Hickman highlighted the schizophrenic attitude of the British when it comes to eating in ‘Crazy’ relationship with food is killing us, says FSA (The Independent, 11^th October 2006): “British people eat the worst food in Europe, the head of a Government watchdog warns today.

(…) Dame Deirdre Hutton, chairman of the Food Standards Agency, placed the UK at the bottom of European countries on nutrition and warned that all parts of society were eating badly.

She said a ‘troubled’ relationship with food caused mass obesity in the general population and made young girls consider going on diets. ‘It’s crazy,’ she said.

Yesterday the Government revealed Britain to be the fattest nation in Europe, with two-thirds of men and 60 per cent of women overweight or obese. Ministers said obesity would be the priority in public health and promised to launch a new strategy next year.

In an interview marking her first year in office, Dame Deirdre – who is locked in a battle with the food industry over processed food labelling – said: ‘I think the evidence to me suggests that the UK has really quite poor nutritional status.

‘And although it is particularly prevalent in the lower socio-economic groups, actually the higher socio-economic groups cannot kid themselves it is the only place where it happens.

‘So it is a broad society problem and the interesting thing is you can look at children as young as six or seven and see that they have a very strange relationship with food’.

The multinational food giants and Britain’s biggest supermarket, Tesco, are boycotting the FSA’s ‘traffic light’ labelling scheme in favour of daily percentages for salt, fat and sugar, even though independent surveys suggest the agency’s system is the easiest to understand.

‘The most obvious symptom of our nutritional status is obesity,’ explained Dame Deirdre.

‘It’s not the only thing – there are equal problems of under nourishment in some areas – but the most obvious problem is obesity coupled with things like high salt in the diet. And the rate of increase appears to be exponential – rather like it is in the US.

‘Although other countries in Europe are catching us up or at least showing a trend growing the same way, we nonetheless remain right at the bottom in terms of poor nutrition and obesity’.

She said the country’s difficult relationship with food extended to children.

‘You have got really young girls worried about being overweight – children as young as seven saying they want to put themselves on a diet. It’s crazy’.

Campaigners estimate that bad diet kills as many as 60,000 Britons each year – not far off the 80,000 deaths from cancer and 15 times the number killed on the roads.

Launching the Government’s Health Profile of England yesterday, Caroline Flint, the Public health Minister, said: ‘The rapid increase in adult and child obesity over the past decade is storing up very serious health problems for the future’. Although surveys in the past year suggest that Britons are improving their diet, the last official research in 2001 found that most people eat 2.8 of the recommended five daily portions of fresh fruit and vegetables a day.

Only half the households surveyed by the FSA in 2005 were cooking with raw ingredients every day. About six million people never or almost never cook fresh food”.

The leader in the same edition, A problem consuming Britain attempts to stir us out of our presumed complacency: “National self-image can be a deceptive thing. Economists tell us that Britain is in a healthy state compared with the rest of Europe. And we are used to hearing about the vibrancy of our cultural life. Yet when it comes to our physical health, the official data released yesterday shows that Britain is actually in a rather poor condition. As the head of the Food Standards Agency points out, we are now the sick man of Europe”.

The article comes full circle by citing the cost argument: “The Prime Minister was right yesterday to stress the importance of establishing the principle of ‘preventive’ health care here if we are to see any improvement. We cannot continue to regard the NHS as a ‘national illness service’ [what the bloody hell is it for, then, if not to treat the sick??]. The Department of Health predicts that 13 million people in England will be obese by 2010. With obesity-related illnesses already costing the nation some £3.5bn a year, this could eventually bankrupt the NHS. The success of the Cuban health service [which may work wonders, yet operates within an authoritarian society, which our Labour masters eye with evident envy, the more dictatorial aspects of which they attempt to emulate wherever possible] shows that when doctors focus not just on a patient’s ailments, but on their general lifestyle, the results can be astonishing.

But the real test for the Government lies in whether it can persuade Britons to eat more healthily. There has been some success. The quality of school meals has shown an improvement after the introduction of new guidelines. But the objectives laid out in the Government’s health White Paper of two years ago look distant. Many deprived areas are still fresh-food deserts. And the Government’s proposed ‘traffic-light’ system for food labelling has been rejected by the food industry.

The Government cannot force people to eat more healthily, but it can do a lot more to encourage it. And a good deal more than our national self-image is riding on the success of such efforts”.

That the stakes are indeed high is made clear by the Daily Mail in Epidemic of obesity ‘could ruin economy’ (10^th November 2006, unattributed): “The obesity crisis sweeping Britain could damage the economy, researchers warn.

They say Britain became one of the most powerful countries in the world because of the health of its citizens.

But this could all be changed if talented professionals die early or retire because of sickness [once again a giveaway; only when fat threatens the “contributory classes” as opposed to the “scrounger classes” does it become a cause for concern worthy of pumping research funding into].

Professor Martin McKee said: ‘The Treasury has identified the cost of obesity to the NHS as a major problem but our research shows how much healthy people contribute to the health of the economy.

‘They remain in the workforce longer and are more productive while they are at work [note how other forms of moral pollution cluster around the “original sin” of fatness with overweight workers automatically branded as less productive, presumably due to the related evil of laziness].

‘This is vital as the overall age of the population rises and people are encouraged to retire later.

‘It is a waste of money investing in training people if they die at 35 [an unsubstantiated and wildly exaggerated figure surely, especially since another investigation into life expectancy that recently hit the headlines put Glasgow at the top of the early mortality league table with a life expectancy of 66 for men, putting the male residents of the city on a par with Albanians] or retire in their 50s because of ill health’.

The team at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical medicine, examined the link between health and wealth in rich countries, and found healthier people have higher earnings”.

This compounds the impression that we fat are not just punishing ourselves and ruining our own lives, but acting selfishly, nay, sociopathically by wrecking our nation’s prosperity: “About 30 per cent of financial growth in the United Kingdom between 1790 and 1980 can be attributed to better health and dietary intake.

Professor McKee said: ‘The overwhelming conclusion is that good health has benefits beyond the individual.

‘The true purpose of economic activity is to maximise social welfare and not simply to produce more goods and services.

‘Since better health is an important component of social welfare, its value ought to be included in measures of economic progress.

‘This has been done successfully in the United States. Similar moves in Europe could provide a new perspective on the investments made through their welfare states’”.

Shyama Perera in Thin people call fat people bad. So melt me down and save everyone a fortune (The Independent, 10^th September 2006) assesses the psychological impact of the fat-disparagement bonanza: “Current policy initiatives to objectivise the fat are doing well. Despite my own gargantuan proportions I find myself tutting over every instance of muffin top among the young, and mature women with heavier thighs than Cherie Blair are immediately assigned a contempt rating.

My girlfriends report that they too have joined the witch-hunt – if only to offset their own lifelong anxieties about size by legitimately pointing the finger at someone who’s even bigger.

Where in the past it was unacceptable to pick on fat kids [an amnesty I ever noticed], the socially dysfunctional, or redundant mining communities fuelling sedentary lives with burgers and fries, one can now vilify them with the establishment’s seal of approval”.

She veers uneasily between orthodoxy and sympathy throughout: “How ironic that revulsion at a burqa and the doctrine it represents is outlawed in this country, but revulsion at the meaning inherent in a waist measurement is positively encouraged. Fattie-baiting is spreading across health departments like the Toronto Blessing. Fat people cost you money – fat people threaten your health.

On that basis, it is now acceptable to refuse them operations, IVF and any manner of medical condition they are deemed to have contributed to by dint of greed. Tonsillitis, Mr Jones? Too much passing traffic, that’s your problem.

Are these health policies new? No, they’re not. Doctors routinely refuse treatment where it compromises them, endangers the patient, or has low success rates within a particular demographic, whatever that demographic may be.

As for assertions about cost, the British Association for Parental and Enteral Nutrition reported last December that malnutrition costs the NHS £7.3bn a year. That’s twice the bill for obesity. If we then place obesity in context alongside vices of choice – binge drinking, drug addiction, smoking, keep fit (sic), and unprotected sex – the figures are even less scary.

Does that mean obesity’s OK? Of course it isn’t! It’s obvious even to a fool that excess weight puts the organs and joints under serious pressure, jeopardising the likelihood of a long and healthy life. It’s vital, then, that we’re given models for healthy and moderate eating.

The issue is this: the fat are being turned into crass objects of ridicule when they are an inevitable by-product of massive social and industrial change.

In the past 40 years, England has evolved from an active, manufacturing society to being computerised, service-led, and sedentary. Women have abandoned the kitchen and joined men in commuter hell. We work the longest hours in Europe. It’s a different way of being. While we’re acclimatising, there isn’t always space for menu-planning and elective exercise. It’s quicker and easier to buy Big Macs or to order a takeaway than it is to go to Asda, transport food home, and cook from scratch.

Meanwhile our children are locked away for fear of stranger danger. Football is banned in the street. Youth clubs have closed. Superstores have replaced playing fields. Inevitably, MySpace, MSN and PlayStations have taken over as leisure activities. We are a society in the throes of a major cultural revolution.

Within that setting, our behaviours may not be wise, but neither are they unreasonable. That’s why righteous protestations and pontifications that find fat people wanting will not only fail, but they will also backfire on those who moot them.

Finger pointing doesn’t work. Painting ‘Burgers Kill’ on fast-food boxes, or ‘Eating Chocolate Could Seriously Damage Your Health’ on every bar of Green & Blacks, will serve only to highlight human weakness, not to lessen it. Alongside those pariahs huddled in doorways over fags, a toke, or a bottle of meths, will we now find the overweight sharing pie and chips?

So why, when 47 per cent of women are a size 16 and over, and one in three men will be clinically obese by 2010, are health chiefs being pejorative instead of seeking solutions that appeal?

Firstly, the fat are an easy target within an cash-strapped NHS struggling to offer even basic healthcare. Secondly, drawing attention to people on the basis of size draws attention away from differences in race or religion: it’s a fairer form of discrimination. The obese have become a useful totem of societal ills – they take up too much room; they’re badly dressed; they shine on hot days and they’re ugly.

This is dangerous ground. Obesity is a general problem. Even posh mums are pushed for solutions when it comes to the frappucino generation – we can all think of examples. I wonder how they feel, being told that they’re a drain on society and bound to die blind of diabetes. It’s not the greatest call to arms. And it’s why health chiefs should think very carefully about the way they’re conducting current campaigns. By alienating the young, they risk doing more harm than good.

The Jamie Oliver approach of getting stuck in at the deep end is a positive one – leading by example and through celebration. His condemnation of lunchbox junk is expressed as caring, not as ridicule. ‘My dream is for our children to be able to cook their children a lovely roast,’ he says.

Our children may have as little time and inclination to cook as their parents, but Oliver’s approach is better than the fast food and M&S cook-chill example shown to my generation.

In the meantime, we have crossed a policy line that makes both fat and thin uncomfortable. Condemnatory pronouncements smack of fascism. Thin people good, fat people bad. Melt them down and save a fortune.

It’s not a new idea of course. The system already exists, administered by Bupa. It is everything Labour hates.

If I were a Tory I’d say this to voters: a teacher aged 50 needs a £6,000 hip replacement. She’s turned down because she’s too fat. On the same day, a new immigrant with HIV signs up for a lifetime of anti-viral drugs costing six figures. Both knowingly risked their health. Both are needy. Only one has put time and money into this community. We’d treat both, because they’re equal in our eyes. Labour didn’t.

Labour heartlands tend to be heavy on the heavy, as the survey on Britain’s fattest towns revealed. If the Government isn’t careful, it may not end up with fat bellies, but there’ll be a few fat lips”.

Her conclusion is just: we must mobilise our political weight before we are ground into total capitulation beneath the twin millstones of disapproval and shame, apologising for the crime of our existence, agreeing with our detractors as they herd us into the operating theatres for lipo-sculpting, excising our bounteousness like a cancer.

Welcome to the 22nd Carnival of the Feminists!

Without further preliminaries, let me proceed immediately to the first topic:

Feminism and Fat.

Jax, of Making it up tackles the fraught relationship we are encouraged to have with our bodies, which affects both fat and thin alike, in Size, fashion and discrimination. She worries that “somehow it’s not feminist to be happy about being thin” and goes on to recount a recent experience on a skirt-buying expedition with her daughter, which proved to be an eye-opener (and will no doubt strike a chord with many parents): “How do we expect women to grow up valuing all the sizes that we can be, accepting each other for what we are, when it would appear we expect all six-year-olds to be the same size? So we are already telling many of our children that they are too big, too small, too thin or too tall”.

Molly, of Molly Saves the Day in Fat shamers take note rightly draws attention to a phenomenon that is sadly inescapable in the lives of those of us who exceed a culturally-prescribed size norm, that of being showered with unsolicited advice and comments, often from random passers-by: “To me, the worst thing about this ‘I’m just trying to be nice’ fat shaming is that it does seem, generally, to be filled with good intentions. The people engaging in it don’t seem to think about the fact that they wouldn’t be so nosy, or so quick to judge, about almost any other trait – physical, behavioural, or mental. Fat-shaming is so much a part of our culture that even the person being made to feel ashamed or condescended to is supposed to feel grateful, not offended”.

Finally, from Natalie Bennett at Philobiblon, we have Chew on this, Ms Hewitt, which disputes the lazy assumption on the part of sanctimonious politicians that fat is a personal problem (which conveniently absolves them of responsibility for getting to grips with such thorny issues as poverty). On her transition to a healthier diet than the one she was brought up on, she writes: “But what has changed is not fundamentally me, but aspects of my environment. I got the right messages; I was provided with the chance to exercise; I was given the right food supplies that I could afford. None of those things are individual; none of them are broadly available to the British public”.

Before moving on to the second topic, I would like to include three posts on the more general issue of appearance. Margaret Ervin, of Basket of Eggs, recalls her reaction to a remark made by a man on her red hair being set off to perfection by her blue dress in Owning Beauty. Again, she tells of an unwanted appraisal, not from what Bartky refers to (drawing on Foucault) as the “panoptical male connoisseur” who “resides within the consciousness of most women”, but a flesh and blood one, who happened to be walking by: “I told the story of walking down the street and being told to smile, commanded in fact to ‘Smile!’ I talked about how that often happened to me. ‘Smile!’ Why did these men think they had the right to tell me to smile? I had plenty of reasons not to smile. Did they want me to look more decorative? Why were they telling me, a perfect stranger, to please them?”

Ann Bartow, of Feminist Law Professors provides us with a salutary (and tongue-in-cheek) reminder of the pettiness of the fashion industry’s imperative to shift more products off the shelves by fostering a perpetual sense of insecurity in consumers in Your Eyebrows Were Too Thick! Now They Are Too Thin!: “But what if you don’t have the patience to grow out your eyebrows, or they are naturally on the thin side? Must you leave the house in a hat that falls mid-retina to hide this appalling facial deformity? Not necessarily, because luckily, there are plenty of NYT advisers ready to help you solve your horrible eyebrow deficiencies if you have adequate time, motivation and expendable cash”. The ludicrousness of it all reminds me of the charming György Pál (1960) version of The Time Machine, in which the protagonist, George, watches the hems on the shop window mannequin’s dresses rise and fall at incredible speed as the seasons fly by.

Holly, of Self-Portrait as…, deals with the subject of breast implants and male mammary fixation (and the range of women’s responses, from pride in corresponding to the ideal, to shame at not and the cleavage between them – sorry, I couldn’t resist, please forgive me) in Just as God made ME: “One day I listened to Muriel and Jane, a couple of my well-endowed friends, decry a survey they’d just read in some women’s magazine, in which the majority of men questioned said that any woman with a B-cup or smaller should get breast implants – these men felt that way even after being told that implants can harden to the point that they feel like baseballs, making certain kinds of physical contact painful if not impossible”.

Topic Two: Feminism and Faith

Since I issued a personal request for the following submission, it seems only appropriate to mention it first. Hugo Schwyzer of the eponymous blog eloquently and passionately advances his arguments on the compatibility of adherence to religious belief and feminism in Faith and Feminism, whilst urging us to move beyond the cardboard cut-out, cliché-ridden language of suspicion and antagonism: “In a way, evangelical Christians and feminists are both largely defined – at least in the public imagination – by their enemies. It’s very easy to caricature either group. The secular left tends to see all evangelical Christians as intolerant, homophobic, jingoistic Republicans; many on the right tend to see active feminists as shrill, angry, humourless, godless liberals. The public pronouncements of leading figures in both movements are regularly quoted out of context in order to reinforce an image of extremism. And of course, both ‘feminists’ and the ‘religious right’ are regularly invoked as dangerous spectres in fund-raising by both conservatives and progressives” [emphasis in original].

Eteraz in Why Muslim Honour Killings Why writes powerfully, uncompromisingly and poignantly about a phenomenon, which feminists surely must engage with: “Having said all that, it should be absolutely clear that I think the ‘honour’ that undergirds the murder of women like Ghazala Khan is a bastardisation of honour. In a properly exercised act of honour, the only person who could judge Ghazala’s honour was Ghazala herself. Yet, instead, all around the Muslim world (and parts of India and China), we find others (usually men) judging the honour of everyone around them, ascribing what they think is an inadequacy in another, to a loss of their own honour, and then, instead of exacting corrective behaviour upon themselves (as a truly honourable person would do), they exact vengeance from those they find inadequate. It becomes a Darwinian pain cycle with the strongest (men) punishing others (women)”.

I would now like to turn to two honest and contemplative posts by Sage of Persephone’s Box. In Those Pagans Were On To Something she meditates on the appeal and relevance of the church (she describes herself as a “recovering Catholic) in spite of some rather obvious deficiencies: “I say I’m recovering from the church because I think it’s poisonous. Christianity is a brilliant philosophy, but I haven’t seen many of Jesus’ ideas implemented at this church. The hierarchical power structure, archaic rules over birth control and divorce, intolerance, and inequitable behaviour towards women are just a few toxins Catholicism leeches out into its prey”. Amen to that, sister!

In the companion piece, Hate the Religion, Not the Religious, she broaches the subject of the relationship between faith and morality (in a manner reminiscent of Richard Dawkins in his documentary The Root of All Evil?): “I actually think that rejecting God can allow for a more sincere morality. We can be good without threat of punishment or loss of rewards. In fact, can we really call someone ‘good’ who only acts kindly in hopes of eternal salvation? I’m much more inspired by those who do what’s right for the sake of what’s right without expectation of fame, fortune, or spiritual longevity” [emphasis in original]

Another superlative post written by a former Catholic appears on Mind the Gap!. In Thoughts on Catholicism and Resistance, Winter acknowledges the role of organised religion in forming her personality and nudging her in the direction of feminist politics. After a careful examination of the ideology (the epitome of the virgin-whore dichotomy), she shows how its messages can be used for practical (and positive) ends in keeping with the believer’s life goals: “Some feminists are not going to like me for saying this, but I am grateful to the church for giving me a much-needed reason to resist when my peers were telling me that I must have sex by the time I was 14. The reason to resist should have come from feminism, but the only feminism that was available to me was the sort that says young women will have sex, therefore the best thing to do is provide plenty of contraception and show them how to get abortions. I wasn’t happy about that either. This is why I think many feminist responses to the Christian abstinence movement are over-simplistic, insofar as they fail to see any attractions within that ideology and view the young women who sign up to it as passive victims of patriarchy” [emphasis in original]

Demonstrating that women are mobilising an active resistance to the Catholic hierarchy, challenging the dead weight of male authority, the Reverend Astrid Joy Storm interviews Jean Marie Marchant, secretly ordained as a priest under a pseudonym. The opening couple of paragraphs certainly grab you by the (metaphorical) short and curlies!

At Culture Kitchen, Lorraine treats us to an incisive, witty and irreverent critique of the church’s impulse to regulate human sexuality, seeking to stifle desires of which it does not approve in Crushing on the King of Kings, inspired by a radio broadcast: “I live out in the country, so ‘Christian stations’ are as frequently encountered as roadkill woodchucks, and usually, I pay them about as much notice. But some woman was talking about her sexual purity, and I couldn’t help it. It just about made me cry. I did not hear the preceding discussion, so I wasn’t sure about what exactly the nature of this woman’s sexual ‘sin’ had been, but I listened in rapt fascination and a sick feeling in my stomach as she recounted how she carried around her ‘brokenness’ for ten years, until the night, in darkness because she didn’t want him to see her face, she confessed her sin to her husband” (I break off the quote here with a suitable cliff-hanger, paragon of wickedness that I am).

Concluding on this theme, breaking ranks at My Left Wing fires a devastating broadside against spiritual authority in The Stained Glass Ceiling: “Spiritual authority is one (man’s) vision imposed on all others, winning pre-eminence through guile, mass mobilisation, and acts of verbal violence. The spiritual authority dictates reality, recording their vision on the world as if people were blank tapes”.

Rainbow

This final section comprises submissions not explicitly related to the announced topics in all their colourful splendour.

Taking marriage as a starting point, Bitch Lab, in Spinster cat ladies aren’t black, provides us with a brilliant illustration of how we are all (and the privileged sociologist is far from immune to the influence of ideology) caught up in a web of social relations where various forms of oppression intersect. For any study to retain credibility, race, class and poverty with all their attendant nuances should never be dwarfed by gender in critical analysis to the extent that they drop out of view: “This isn’t to say that women who aren’t white and middle class don’t think about marriage and weddings, just that the pressure isn’t there in the same ways. And, it’s to say that there are other kinds of pressures which shape the way people decide to live their lives, what opportunities are open and which are closed, what tools of resistance they have at their disposal, what cultures and languages they speak, and even what languages of individualism are encouraged and even available to them”.

At Vee Levene’s Insipid Missives, Vee expertly dissects two articles, exposing their respective subtexts in Porn chic for women and girls. Denouncing the way ruthless marketers sink their claws into tender young (female) flesh, Vee adeptly steers us back into the territory of objectification and sexualisation of pre-pubescent bodies. Taking issue with a glib comment in an interview that, by emulating models through the fashions that they wear, girls are actively articulating “views”, Vee questions what these might consist of: “The ‘view’ of the knowledge that the best a woman can do is be appearance-based and as unnatural as possible, for the purposes of competing with other women and pleasing men? Since when does fashion (especially mainstream fashion) even begin to encompass the range of ‘views’ and opinions any individual – no matter what age – has? And in a case like this, with marketers insidiously targeting the most impressionable of the population; how can these ‘views’ be considered anything other than societal influence?”

Verbify at Signifying Nothing gets to grips with a discussion of courtship by Cassandra de Benedetto at Modestly Yours in oh fer christ’s sake. The quoted passages make for depressing reading indeed, furnishing proof (if any were needed) that many women prefer submission to male authority (to the extent that they accept the male claim of ownership over their bodies) to the autonomy that feminism offers: “In Cassandra’s view (…) a woman is not capable of going through life, of surviving, much less thriving, without a man looking out for her, wiping her nose, holding her hand as she crosses the street, cosigning car loans, calling her boss when he threatens her. To Cassandra, a woman without a man is, well, nonexistent” [emphasis in original]

Melissa, at Mobwhorelog condemns the self-serving nature (especially on the part of parasitical whore-prospectors) and class-based myopia that permeates much of the writing on the sex industry even amongst feminists in What’s empowering about whoring (question mark), a challenging, provocative and intelligent piece that challenges complacent assumptions. In Melissa’s words: “It is not for our supposed slavery but for our freedom that I am fearful that sex workers will never find the stigma we’re stuck with lessening. What the most outspoken of sex workers represent, the very few who can risk being open, is not fucking, but freedom. Not ‘freedom of choice’, or some abstract ‘freedom to come’, but freedom to live honourably alongside society. No, not outside society, but right in it – and by contrary rules”.

Marcella, at abyss2hope, summarily dismisses the fatuous conclusions drawn from the results of a survey in her succinct, but excellent Feminist Rape Crisis Over?, providing us with a salutary reminder that we cannot repeat the message about male violence often enough. Her own verdict, steeped in irony: “If it weren’t for victim-blaming and feminist-bashing, you might not know some people realize that anyone but small children and dead women are raped and that rapists are anybody except gays, illegal aliens, minorities and Muslims”.

Antiprincess, at I shame the matriarchy, in a harrowing piece of personal testimony, succeeds admirably in her undertaking to re-connect the often belligerent and impassioned torrent of words that is living feminist debate to the “human experience” of dreadful spousal abuse: “Feminism did not shield me, because the Patriarchy wasn’t beating me. A human being was beating me. He was, his fists were, both true and real. He was not a figment of the collective imagination. He was not a concept, a generalized sort of shorthand to symbolize centuries of suffering. He was a fellow human being”.

Concentrating on another aspect of women’s right to control their own bodies, Roni, at Goddess Musings, judiciously laments the exclusion of teenage girls from prescription-free access to the morning-after pill in Not good news at all, a stirring battle-cry: “So I ask you all to remember the young women who have been left out of this revolution. I know, even getting one condom out of this administration would be a victory, but we cannot give up. We cannot let this partial victory be also a partial victory for all the anti’s who want all young women to grow up without access or knowledge to reproductive health services”.

Amanda, at Ballastexistenz in Wow. Stuff about the anti-political nature of therapy confirms something I have always suspected (although my own experience of psychologists are utterly trivial in comparison to hers), namely, that in most instances therapy is all about taming and squeezing the recalcitrant client into a pre-determined mould, about forcing you to conform to social definitions of normality, reconciling you to the circumstances, which are causing you acute pain and distress in order to improve your “functionality” as opposed to tackling the root causes (the aforementioned circumstances) themselves. All that therapists teach us is to bottle up/suppress our anger rather than release it more fruitfully. Thus, as Amanda so perceptively explains, therapy is directly inimical to political action, narrowing the focus to the individual, “repairing” a “defect” instead of interrogating the iniquities of an unjust situation. A dazzling assault on the tyranny of experts, the literature cited also makes it a treasure trove for anyone interested in the dangers of avoiding confrontation as well as the corrosive effect therapist-dependence has on genuine human interaction. One brief excerpt ought to suffice to whet the reader’s appetite: “Therapism makes it so that friends don’t actually have to do things for each other, there are professionals for that. It makes it so that if one person is assisting another person more at any given particular amount of time, this can be considered ‘co-dependent’ rather than a part of the natural ebb and flow of a relationship. Aside from encouraging selfishness, therapy seems to encourage an incredibly superficial kind of friendship wherein if any problems arise for your friends, you aren’t expected to help in dealing with them, you’re expected to tell them to go to a professional”.

On the literary front, Nina, at Queer Cents, skilfully interviews author Amy Guth about finances, feminism and her debut novel Three Fallen Women in Ten Money Questions for Amy Guth: “I wrote Three Fallen Women at a time when I was seeing a few people around me unable or unwilling to enforce their personal boundaries in various ways. I think most of us learn this lesson through trial and error, sure, but suddenly I was noticing a lot of people who didn’t seem to have a grasp in that direction at all. The more I saw this, the more I started noticing things people were enslaved to. Food, pain, drama, clutter, money, misery, people, rotten partners – it was everywhere! So, I ended up writing a lot about the freedom that comes from setting boundaries and practicing self-reliance and ended up doing it through the mouthpiece of these characters”.

Sandy, at the imponderabilia of actual life, treats us to a detailed, balanced and thoughtful review of Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World by Linda R. Hirshman. The following passage will hopefully give you a flavour of the critique: “Personally, I think that restructuring both the family (dividing household and childcare tasks more evenly) and the workplace (to be more ‘family-friendly’ is much more radical than Hirschman’s suggestions, which leave the corporate underpinnings that devalue the private sphere totally unchanged. In fact, encouraging upper-class parents to employ lower-class women to care for their children and clean their houses strikes me as downright conservative” [emphasis in original]

A tangible and thought-provoking illustration of how women’s participation in remunerated employment at the top end is given at the Workplace Prof Blog in New study Stresses Importance of Women in Senior Management Positions to Reduce Gender Gap in Income.

Nursepam, at 21st Century Lesbian Trailer Trash, ponders the implications of Louann Brizendine’s book in A Woman’s Brain: “There still remains within our culture the dichotomy of The Other. Us and Them. And it is alive and well in the idea of the superiority of the masculine.
This is where the causes of feminism, racism and homophobia converge. As long as we insist on putting our energies into deciding which is better, and then subjugating the group(s) who are Other than ourselves, we take our energies away from saving the planet and the human race as a whole”. A resounding endorsement to those sentiments!

Jpfbookworm, at Official Shrub.com, ventures into the realm of etiquette and dining in Sexism on a Plate (Classism, too), assessing a phenomenon I have (thankfully) not yet encountered (it is annoying enough when I eat out with my partner, whom I support financially, and the waiter always brings back the credit card I have deposited on the saucer alongside the cash tip for him to sign the slip before cringing with embarrassment when the Hungarian smiles and passes the pen to me) of menus with a blank space where the prices should be: “Quite obviously the practice of assuming that a man will pay for a woman’s meal is a sexist one, whether that assumption takes the form of handing the check to a man, or giving a woman a menu without prices”.

In drawing to a close, I would like to strike a more light-hearted note – we have, after all, cogitated on life, the universe and everything to borrow Douglas Adams’s phrase. Firstly, from Audrey at Talking Pony we have Sex for Money, which admittedly examines the very serious issue of the options open to “a twentysomething woman with a top-notch degree”.

Finally, Madeleine at Mad Kane allows us to take our leave of this edition with a smile on our faces, with her superb and hilarious parody of those quizzes we like to while away an idle minute or two with in Those Unspeakable Meetings.

The next Carnival will be hosted by Lingual X at Lingual Tremors on 20th September.

“The question I come back to again and again is ‘WHY DO YOU CARE IF I’M FAT?’ It’s my body. I know full well what I’m doing to it. I’m not blowing secondhand smoke on you. I’m not drunk-driving into you. I’m not taking food out of your mouth. Unless you’re crawling around in my skin, it doesn’t affect you in a direct way”
Wendy Shanker, The Fat Girl’s Guide to Life (New York, Bloomsbury, 2004, p35)

A common misapprehension about language is that it is nothing more than a communication tool devised to transmit cold facts and that it has no link with identity. Such a reductivist attitude ignores the emotional content most eloquently captured by poets, whose finely crafted locutions articulate our passion and rage. One of the many pleasures of language is its malleability, its restless innovatory drive as it evolves to reflect technological and other developments. It seizes new concepts, pinning them down in bright splendour like the exotic butterfly collection of the Victorian amateur, lovingly recorded and preserved for the wonder of future generations (for whom the words and phrases will have fallen into disuse in much the same way as many of the rarer species will have been driven to extinction). Language both mirrors and shapes the societies in which we live, subtly channelling our perceptions. It reflects the preoccupations and anxieties of the moment of coinage with a playful inventiveness, drawing on extant concepts in its creative impulse. Dictionaries are the repository of a nation’s wit, fulfilling the function of the glass-topped display cabinet of the enthusiast who carefully categorises and labels his specimens. A report on the latest crop of new entries reveals the extent of our obsession with scrutinising every supposed blemish and defect of those around us (Daily Mail, unattributed, 30^th August 2006), Muffin top rolls out for the dictionary: “Once it was simply an anonymous roll of fat.

But that midriff flesh that bulges annoyingly over your waistband has been honoured with its own place in the English language.

‘Muffin top’ is one of 500 new words and phrases in the latest edition of the Chambers Dictionary.

The new entries, to be published next month, feature a heavy concentration of body-conscious terms”.

Even age no longer exempts you from the drive to banish any manifestation of time’s unkind passage as another coinage demonstrates: “‘Bingo wing’, a flap of loose skin that hangs from the upper arm, also makes its debut.

The condition is apparently often spotted among bingo enthusiasts of a certain age when they raise their hands at a game.

A ‘munter’ is an unattractive person, especially a woman, while a ‘salad dodger’ is a person with an unhealthy diet”.

Emine Saner also commented on the trend in A word or two on muffin tops (The Guardian, 31^st August 2006): “‘Every time we create a new edition we get a snapshot of how the world has changed in the three years since we last did it,’ says Ian Brookes, editor of the Chambers Dictionary. Of the 500 new words that will make it into the dictionary in two weeks’ time, unsurprisingly the majority come from technology (remember when you had never heard of iPods or weblogs?) but a significant number focus on our obsession with physical appearance. ‘It is particularly noticeable,’ says Brookes, ‘because it is not an area where you always expect new words to come from. It certainly reflects out ideals of beauty’”.

As the main burden of maintaining a physique as close to the “perfect” as possible falls upon women, the bulk of the new vocabulary (the distillate of social disapproval) applies to them: “Brookes’ team of lexicographers scour publications looking for repeated examples of new words or phrases. Some magazines have made an art form of circling celebrities’ flaws and coming up with ever more cruel ways of describing them.

The success of the GI diet, followed by Kylie Minogue and Naomi Campbell, ensures an entry for ‘glycaemic index’ (how quickly carbohydrates are broken down into blood sugar). Those who don’t follow diets (‘salad dodgers’) have new words to describe them, none of them flattering. A ‘bingo wing’ is an unattractive wobbling underarm, seen on bingo players as they wave their arms around excitedly. A ‘muffin top’ is the roll of flab that rises, dough-like, from one’s too-tight, too-low waistband. ‘Munter’ is another word, used to describe someone physically unattractive. It is normally a woman – in fact, most of these words are usually used to describe women.

‘This range of words reflects an ideology and there is a need for feminist examination of the relationship between sexist language and ideology,’ says Dr Pia Pichler, a linguist at Goldsmith’s College, London. Men are given ‘metrosexual’ – a heterosexual man who takes time and effort over his appearance – which means he tries to look like David Beckham, and so is hardly a derogatory term”.

These terms were not new, as shown by David Wilkes in (Daily Mail, 16^th September 2005), Be honest, does my bouncy castle look big in this?: “Their bodies may not be perfect, but their sense of humour is in great shape.

Women are lightening up about the once-heavy burden of physical deficiency, and have invented a whole new language of self-deprecating code phrases to identify their faults.

‘Cankles’, ‘bee stings’ and ‘saddle bags’ may not appear in your dictionary, but to the body-conscious, but newly carefree female, they are definitive.

Some phrases, such as ‘bingo wings’ (untoned flesh on the upper arms) and ‘love handles’ (flesh on the sides and lower back) had already found their way into common usage.

Others are part of what researchers refer to as a ‘secret language’ among women. Laughing among themselves, it would seem, is fine, but letting men in on the joke is going too far.

By way of translation, ‘cankles’ are thick calves merging into undefined ankles, ‘bee stings’ are small breasts, and ‘saddle bags’ are fatty deposits on the outer thigh.

Particularly unlucky women may also be unhappy about ‘love cushions’, or fatty deposits on the inner thigh. A ‘bouncy castle’ is not a children’s party accessory, but a large, shapeless bottom, while a ‘rubber ring’ is not an inflatable swimming aid but a podgy midriff.

A survey of 1,000 women aged 16 and over conducted for Dove Body Wash found that 71 per cent of women found laughing with friends about their apparent defects helped them cope with their imperfections”.

In a context where women are encouraged to seek fulfilment from forming relationships with men and are expected to compete for scarce resources (affection and admiration from men as a primary component of self-esteem) the use of such “secret language” enables them to bond amongst themselves without inflicting the deep wounds that the meat-market appraisals of the casual male onlooker have the power to do, removing the shame and as much of the stigma as possible within a fat-hating culture. They attempt to acknowledge the rivalry whilst taking the sting out of it, subverting it, even if only momentarily, to promote solidarity and cohesion within the assembled group. The humour is the vehicle by which this effect is achieved, but its undertone is bitter nevertheless. Fat is still the enemy, but is depicted in a less vicious and loathing manner than in the assessments of an anonymous passer-by (the “lard-bucket” category of insult, which nobody likes to apply to themselves, unless they are prone to feelings of guilt after a tub of ice-cream or another similar “excess”). There is almost a hint of affection towards the “afflicted” body part.

This impression is corroborated further on in Wilkes’s piece: “Sociologist and humour expert Professor Christie Davies, who helped with the survey, said: ‘Today’s women are forced to compare themselves with the airbrushed images of magazines and movies so it is not surprising that they pick faults with their appearance.

‘But the comical terms they are using suggest a healthy and honest attitude towards the issue. It’s the female equivalent of bald men getting together and having a laugh about being egg-heads.

‘These phrases seem to have been developed by women and they are different to the kind of insulting words which men might use.

‘In fact, many men we asked did not even know what some of them meant. It’s almost as if it is a kind of private language among women’”.

Other phrases listed by Wilkes include: “spaniel’s ears” for saggy or drooping breasts; “corned beef legs” for mottled or blotchy skin on legs and “Buddha belly” for a protruding, pot-like stomach.

The cover of the August edition of Observer Woman bore the headline Thin! coupled with some statistics concerning the weights of certain celebrities, afforded a comparatively rare (when compared to the screeds of invective penned against the fat, although I admit that gossip or celebrity magazines do not form part of my reading matter) opportunity to examine the type of language deployed against those felt to transgress the norm of avoiding excess by being judged to be too emaciated. Inside, the article proper by Mimi Spencer, The shape we’re in, provides a mildly polemically-tinged but thoughtful exploration of the media’s (more specifically, the glossy press) response to skinniness and the motives behind it: “She’s far too thin. Everybody says so. In those shrunken hot pants and skinny red vest she looked positively ravenous, like an urchin from Oliver Twist – albeit one with this season’s Prada handbag and hair extensions.

But just how skinny is Victoria Beckham? How would it fell if she sat on your lap? Would she be heavier than a kitten? If you hugged her would she break? We do know that she wears jeans with a miniscule 23-inch waist – the size, apparently, of a seven-year-old child (it is also, as it happens, the precise circumference of my head).

VB is not alone, of course, but merely the leading exponent of a new look which has come to dominate our lives (…) [exemplified by] women relatively new on the celebrity radar who skitter across the pages of magazines, coat hangers furnished with tennis-ball boobs and expensive shoes, not a shred of fat to share among them. You might not give a tossed salad how much these bony birds weigh. You might even agree with Kate Hudson (who recently won a libel action against the UK National Enquirer magazine for implying she had an eating disorder) that it is none of our business. But it is. It matters because hyper-thin has somehow become today’s celebrity standard and, as a result – almost without us noticing – the goalposts have moved for us all.

With every image of Nicole Richie’s feeble wrists or Posh Spice’s concave thighs – which seem to shy away from each other as if they’ve never been properly introduced – with every shot, an inch or an ounce is shaved off the notional ideal female form which governs our relationship with our bodies and the rest of the world. Images of Lindsay Lohan’s chest bones, desperately reaching out to greet strangers, or Keira Knightley’s xylophone of vertebrae, countable at 30 paces, have burned themselves into our consciousness so that über-thin no longer looks odd. It no longer shocks. But it does make you look at your own soft, warm body in a hard new light. It’s almost as if, in the course of a generation, we’ve overturned the age-old feminine ideal – maternal, curvaceous, zaftig”.

The constant bombardment with photographs and TV and cinema footage has brainwashed us into accepting the pathological as the sublime, to be envied and emulated: “To achieve this mental switcheroo, something seismic has happened, enough to make a body mass index of 10 (the BMA recommends something in the region of 22) look nearly normal to our rewired brains. When you rub your eyes, though, and snap yourself out of the reverie, you realise that this isn’t glamorous. It’s cadaverously, dangerously thin.

I have seen this kind of thin before. It resided in the endocrinology department at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, where a member of my own family was treated for anorexia throughout her teens. Little could I have known that, in the intervening two decades, the morbidly hungry body type I saw there would become celebrated, a glory to which women of all ages aspire.

And they do. We do. If we are truthful, it’s not just anorexics who pedestal the thin; we all do, to one extent or another. After all, the mantra of our age is that thin gets you noticed. It gets you a contract as a TV presenter or a model or a singer in a girl band. Thin fast-tracks you with far more alacrity than a degree in history. More than that, as a society, we tend to cast a forgiving eye upon the very thin, while castigating the repugnantly fat”.

This constitutes a radical caesura with the past: “In this looking-glass world, a 100-pounder is a heavyweight. Size 00 – a logical impossibility when you pause to consider it – is now Hollywood’s dress-size of choice. True perspective can be gained when you consider that the pin-up of the 1890s was Lillian Russell, all 200 pounds of her. We don’t even have to mention Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren – none of whom would get the job today – to know that something’s up.

Studies have shown that, while 25 years ago the average model weighed eight per cent less than the average American woman (and, yes, Twiggy was abnormally petite in her day), today’s model weighs 23 per cent below the national average. This points up the fascinating paradox that, while we are desperate to keep up with our ever-shrinking celebrities, the average woman is actually getting bulkier. We’re round like melons and fat like sausages, despite obsessing about our lardy arses every day. Fat lot of good it does us. While our icons are running the distinct risk of slipping between the cracks in the pavement, we’re turning into bollards. Thirty-eight per cent of British women are now classified as overweight, and one in five is obese. If we resemble anyone, it’s not Posh Spice. It’s Elton John.

As long ago as 2000, the BMA, in its report ‘Eating Disorders, Body Image and the Media’, noted that the extreme thinness of celebrities was ‘both unachievable and biologically inappropriate,’ observing that the gap between the media ideal and the reality appeared to be making eating disorders worse. ‘At present, certain sections of the media provide images of extremely thin or underweight women in contexts which suggest that these weights are healthy or desirable,’ it stated, recommending that normal women in the upper reaches of a healthy weight should be ‘more in evidence on television as role models for young women’. Television producers and those in advertising should review their employment of very thin women, and the Independent Television Commission should review its advertising policy, the report recommended. Six years on, the converse has happened”.

Apart from the occasional bout of cathartic moral self-interrogation on the part of the sleek purveyors of these ethereal, air-brushed angels nothing interrupts the calculated business as usual cynicism: “For years now the dreaded ‘thin issue’ has plagued the fashion press, who stand accused of promoting a singular and unachievable body shape with every androgynous little sparrow to grace their glossy pages. Every now and then, we see a flutter of concern – when Omega pulled its ads from Vogue in a 1997 protest, for instance, or when the industry’s prime movers were called to a meeting at Downing Street in 2000 to grapple with the issue. What tends to emerge after the dust has died down is a whole lot of nothing. There are occasional forays into the fat zone – a 1997 Nick Knight shoot in Vogue called ‘Modern Curves’ featured plus size model Sara Morrison; in the same year, The Body Shop ran a series of ads with the tag line, ‘There are three billion women who don’t look like supermodels and only eight who do’. Set against the vast portfolio of ‘thimages’ which make up the wallpaper of our lives, these trifling efforts have about as much impact as a bubble on the wind”.

One of the merits of Spencer’s argument is that she does not engage in a simplistic and one-sided attribution of blame, but recognises that we are all caught up in the quest for “self-improvement” with our voracious and insatiable appetite for these noxious products that so corrode our confidence: “Following the Downing Street initiative, Premier, a top model agency, argued convincingly that women who bought fashion magazines were as much to blame as the editors and advertisers who used them. ‘It’s a supply-and-demand thing – advertisers, magazines and agencies supply the image that consumers want to see. Statistics show that if you stick a beautiful skinny girl on the cover of a magazine you sell more copies’”.

Although the camera might flatter more bounteous bodies when bared, when enveloped in folds of cloth the lens is less forgiving (at least our eyes have been rigorously and unrelentingly trained to interpret the images thus) and Spencer reminds us of the fashion magazines’ mission statement, shifting expensive glad rags off the racks and raking in advertising revenues in return: “Boom. The bottom line. Clothes. Put bluntly, clothes look better on a slim frame. ‘Being skinny doesn’t mean you’ve automatically got a good body, not at all,’ confides one wafer-thin friend. ‘Thin definitely doesn’t give you good legs, just thinner legs. But it does, by and large, mean you’ll look alright in clothes’.

And don’t we all of us want that? In my experience, there’s a constant jockeying for position on the weight front among women, a competitive, low-grade bitchery (…) which reveres the dropping of a dress size and stigmatises the gaining of a kilo. Of course, if you’re bright and grown-up and plugged into the issues of the day, you tend not to let on that you’re fascinated by other women’s bottoms. But you are. We are. We look. We compare. In our image-saturated, overweight universe, we’re hypercritical of our peers and our paragons. It’s nothing to do with men (…) and everything to do with competition between females.

‘Women are duplicitous on this issue,’ says Leeds Medical School psychologist Dr Andrew Hill. ‘Much of the pressure about appearance and weight is applied by other women. In the face of nutritional abundance, women are showing their status by eating poorly – much as corpulent belly historically indicated status in times of privation. It’s perverse, but a reverse snobbery now informs our relationship with weight; being thin in an overweight society is a sign of control. It takes enormous will to stay thin.

‘Nationally, we are getting fatter by a percentage point each year – so people who are trying to lose weight, which means most of us, are in awe of the high achievers in the field. We’re also intimately involved in celebrity lives in a way we never used to be. We’re encouraged to have an opinion by an invasive media’”.

The very unattainability of the ideal spurs us to ever greater sacrifices or plunges us into a slough of despondency in which we are exasperated by the recalcitrance and intransigence of our corporeal matter, learning to despise our bodies rather than love them for defying our will (in a virulently unforgiving mind-body duality the most severe of the early Christian ascetics would have been proud of): “For all but the very disciplined – or very disturbed – the kind of hyper-thin portrayed by the stars is an impossible goal, which is why so many Western women are in a constant state of food anxiety. Four in 10 of us are on a permanent diet. Ninety-eight per cent of us hate our bodies. We nurse our own little rituals, weight-management tics that were once the preserve of the Hurleys and Paltrows of this world, carefully tailored to suit our needs. We know how much bread we ate for lunch and whether we can, therefore, have half a potato for supper. We’re living under a siege of our own making, bedevilled by a sickening guilt as we lick the last chocolate smear from a Magnum lolly”.

This mentality is encapsulated in an excerpt from my diary, virtually the only mention of the subject in my lengthy chronicle of adolescent Angst, dating all the way back to 31^st July 1983 when I was about to turn 18: “Now, I’m not trying to say that I have an image of myself which is totally unrealistic, but in the opposite direction than previously, i.e. I don’t think I’m the most gorgeous female in the universe. I know that I’m too fat to be really even my own image of perfect beauty, but I’m not all that worried. I still want to lose the weight so I can feel at peace with myself in a quiet, modestly self-confident fashion. I’m not out to attract men, , well, I’m only out to attract one man, CD, but now I don’t constantly worry about every millimetre of fat. I’m actually quite happy as I am, but I know I can be EVEN BETTER, so I’m striving to lose the weight, you see! I’ll get dressed, but I can say to myself and believe that it’s not because I’m an ugly, fat slob that CD doesn’t love me”. I do not believe it was a coincidence that I was a member of a fundamentalist sect at the time, a born-again Christian burning with zeal to convert the world. The message could hardly be clearer: accumulating fat disqualifies you as a sexual being.

Spencer intimates that the cultural climate is likely to turn even more harshly against those of us already dismissed as defective because of our weight: “So, why? Why, after emancipation, feminism, after – ha ha – Girl Power – should pouring yourself into a very small frock be such a stellar achievement? Isn’t it embarrassingly shallow and meaningless?

We persist, says Dr Hill, because weight has come to signify all that is desirable, because ‘judgement of character is increasingly based on superficial appearance. We objectify celebrities, inferring all sorts of things from their physical appearance. Image colours everything, simply because, in a world overloaded with information, we cling to what is most obvious: and that’s how things look’.

The recent influx of what Dr Hill calls ‘talentless self-seeking bimbettes’ into the fame game has only concentrated more fully on looks alone; that’s all that remains now that silly old talent appears to have been excised from the equation. In Victoria Beckham’s case, her ‘thimage’ has become a life raft for a sinking career”.

Mel Hudson (The Guardian, 29^th August 2006) spoke up in defence of those who have been spared the tongue-lashings traditionally reserved for the fat in Time to put an end to skinny-bashing: “Over the holiday weekend, the report outlining the ‘obesity timebomb’ [sic] has loomed large (sorry) in the headlines, but the week before it was business as usual as regards the routine vilification of thin women. Witness the Grazia scare-piece, ‘Horror of the Size 00 Girls’, which followed a special report (‘Thin!’) in the Observer, both accompanied by the usual snaps of celebrity women deemed to be dangerously influencing young girls by, er, having pictures of themselves in the papers.

I don’t want to come across like someone complaining about being too rich, but here’s the thing – I’m a very thin woman. Naturally, non-anorexically, without dieting, or doing any exercise. Hard for some people to swallow (sorry again), but there it is. It doesn’t make me beautiful – you could take pictures of me, with my big head and supersized hair, looking as weirdly lollipoppy as Posh, and my partner says my hands remind him of a 90-year-old chicken’s feet. But it doesn’t make me ill. Or morally repugnant. And I’m getting heartily (albeit metaphorically) sick of apparent concern over anorexia providing a sneaky excuse for a sneaky bit of thinny-bashing.

My first hint of this trend came at a parents’ do at my son’s school, when a couple of women launched into the following smalltalk: ‘We’re worried about you – you’re too thin’. Instead of expressing a corresponding anxiety over the likely blood-alcohol level of one, and unfortunate resemblance to Barry Took of the other, I proffered my usual apologies:

Me: Oh, I know! I don’t know why, I mean I eat properly and everything.

Them: Really? Three meals a day?

Me: Yes.

Them: And pudding as well?

Me: Absolutely.

Them: Sweets? Fizzy drinks? Crisps and chocolates between meals?

Me: Er…?
Next came Arabella Weir, in a TV documentary by Janet Street-Porter earlier this year, comparing ‘stick-women’ with ‘normal women like me’. Honestly! Just because you don’t want to be oppressed by somebody else’s idea of a norm doesn’t mean you have to set up a new norm, based on yourself, which might be equally impossible for other people to conform to.

And the thin-bashing continues with the current ‘size 00’ hysteria. Mimi Spencer’s Observer article quotes Nadine Coyle saying there is nothing she can do about her skinny legs, and generously ripostes: ‘Oh yes there is Nadine! Try chocolate fudge cake. Works for me every time’. [This passage, which I did not reproduce, is in parentheses in the original piece and is included as part of an analysis of a cover story of a magazine aimed at a teenage audience, which lists the exact weights of various celebrity women] In Grazia, the fascinated talk is of the possibility of Posh’s muscles being eaten from within. Woman-on-woman thinny-phobia is rampant: it’s got to the point where I hardly dare go out for fear of being strung up by my own skinny jeans and force-fed the products of other women’s liposuction.

Luckily, with the news of a massive projected increase in (especially female childhood) obesity, the thin panic has temporarily yoyo’d back into its counterpart, the fat panic.

Maybe I can relax for a while”.

I cannot help feeling that Hudson errs on the side of unfairness in her assessment of Spencer’s original, which, in spite of the infusion of humour throughout, is far more serious in intent than the outburst quoted suggests. In order to shore up her contention that a wave of skinny-bashing is currently in vogue, she overlooks the crucial and unpalatable fact that fat-bashing is the ever-present background radiation of our culture. There is no comparison between the sheer volume of pejorative synonyms for the fat and those for the thin (and I am not advocating that we “salad-dodgers” catch up through a concerted linguistic effort, on the contrary, I would welcome it if all such discriminatory words could be gradually eliminated from the language, although I recognise that this is probably Utopian). Moreover, the number of articles consolidating the pervasive fat-hating ideology vastly outstrips those directed against the thin.

Worship of the super-thin affects fat and thin alike, though not equally. It diverts our energies from more worthwhile pursuits and keeps us conveniently divided in mutual suspicion and hostility. I agree that retaliating for the injuries and injustices heaped upon us “fatties” with skinny-bashing is puerile. Yet school playground chants such as “skinny malincky long-legs with big banana feet” do not carry the devastating censure that even the simplest and most unadorned lexical item such as “fat” conveys. I am not condoning skinny-bashing or snap judgements made on the basis of any size or shape. However, skinniness matches the cultural ideal. Fat does not. For this reason alone, skinny-bashing, even at its most gratuitously nasty, can never resonate so hurtfully. Sniping at the skinny usually contains a component of envy, whereas sniping at the fat bolsters a sense of innate superiority (fostered by the culture). Like fatness, skinniness can result from a variety of factors, yet the fat are uniformly assumed (unless we have some medical condition and can wave the doctor’s certificate under the noses of our detractors) to be victims of our own greed and laziness. The courtesy of even remotely entertaining the notion that the fat person does not sit on the sofa in front of the TV set all day cramming in the cream doughnuts is not extended to us. Nobody wants to be like us. Our presence is banished except perhaps in comedy. We are not vaunted as role models, but lumbering warnings, our frames featuring only from behind and only in reports of impending doom and social collapse.

That we are not left in peace, but constantly chivvied to get a grip on ourselves is illustrated by a couple of contributions to the readers’ letter page in the Daily Mail, (10^th July 2006), It’s rude to stare: “Society seems to think it is its duty to alert obese people to their weight. Do these ignorant individuals think we don’t own a mirror or a set of scales?

I have been on the receiving end of these insensitive comments for years, even though most of the time I was only a 14 or 16 dress size, which isn’t enormous.

I was deeply hurt by them when I was younger, but now I think these people are only trying to boost their own flagging self-esteem. They need a lesson in manners.

I’ve made myself a T-shirt saying, ‘B[ollocks] to anybody who is offended by my size’.

I am happy in myself and am lucky to have two wonderful children to show for my big belly and bum. So what if I’m large? I’m not harming you, am I? Get a life, people”.

And, from 6^th July 2006, Big, fat lie: “Another anorexic complains that ‘fat people aren’t told they’re fat’. I beg to differ.

At the age of 15, I was told I was fat by my grandmother. I weighed 52kg (just over 8st), a healthy weight for my height, but my brothers teased me about it, leaving me resentful and angry.

I began to eat as a form of control. No one was to tell me not to eat.

Throughout my life, I have been told I am fat, overweight or anything else people think they can say to me. People feel they have the right to comment, whether you’re fat or thin.

However, in today’s fashion-conscious climate, people’s concern for those who are ‘too thin’ is tinged with envy, while they show nothing but disgust when they see someone overweight. Anorexia kills – so does obesity”.

Wendy Shanker, in her marvellous antidote to fat-hatred, The Fat Girl’s Guide to Life, mercilessly exposes the subtext of an example of grooming talk that has recently gained in popularity: “Why don’t people know how to give a compliment? I brace myself for the following example, which I hear with some regularity:

‘You look great. Have you lost weight?’

‘No, I haven’t. But you just made me feel like shit. Congratulations’.

‘Have you lost weight?’ is a slight. It implies that losing weight is what made you look good. It implies that you looked bad before you lost weight and were therefore not deserving of said compliment. It assumes that you are in a constant state of trying to lose weight, which you may not be. We need to disassociate positive compliments with weigh loss” (op. cit., p237).

She goes on to highlight a similar clanger (one of which I have personal experience. I have never worn a dress since): “NEVER EVER ask a woman if she is pregnant. Not until she starts pulling out sonograms and showing you her registry on babiesareus.com should you ever assume that a woman is with child. When you’re not preggers – just a tub of flub – it’s mortifying. After half a dozen embarrassing encounters that began with ‘When are you due?’ I started giving it right back. Now I almost yearn for someone to ask me about my due date. My standard response is as follows:

‘When are you due?’

‘I’m not pregnant. I’m just fat’.

‘Oh, I didn’t mean…uh…’

Let the other person be embarrassed. It’s not your problem.

My body is not your conversation piece. Sometimes when someone invades my body space by saying something rude to me about my weight, I tell them that fat is contagious – that I used to be a lovely slender girl, then I mocked some chubby chick and woke up fat the next day. Like something out of a Stephen King novel. That shuts ‘em up real quick” (op. cit., pp238-9).

Armando Iannucci’s caustically satirical lambasting of flight passengers’ intolerance to would-be fellow-boarders in the wake of the alleged bomb plot (The Observer, 27^th August 2006) Come fly with me – unless you’ve eaten all the pies, that is offers a wonderful illustration of fat-denigration: “An eyewitness writes

We were coming back from our holidays in Spain and it was 3am when the flight was scheduled to depart, so we were all pretty tired, but I still had my wits about me. There were these two strange-looking men who came on the flight at the very last minute, and they were both clinically obese. That’s when me and all the other passengers told the cabin crew we weren’t happy and asked for them to be removed. I think we were right. One of them was so fat that he looked like he might explode at any minute.

When we arrived back in Britain, there was stuff in the paper saying we were over-reacting. But I say, what if one of those clinically obese men had sat next to me? His extreme body weight could either have crushed me to death against the side of the plane or, and this is the nightmare scenario, have heaved me at such pressure against the window that it burst open in mid-flight, sucking me out.

Now, some of you might argue, well, that’s OK, because the fat guy would have got sucked out with you and, as you plummeted to the ground, you could manoeuvre him round so that, when you hit the ground, his thick flesh cushioned your fall. But what you guys don’t seem to consider is the possibility he might have tried to do the same, ending up on top of me so that, even if I’d survived the 30,000ft plunge, I would have been crushed to death by a fatso. A lot of them get trained in things like this when they go off to fat camps”.

Contrast these sentiments with the contents of another genuine reader’s letter from the Daily Mail (19^th July 2006), Fat’s entertainment?: “If large people want to be fat and happy, that’s fine by me, as long as they don’t do it in space that I’ve paid for.

A performance at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-on-Avon was completely ruined for me because I was sitting in seats with no dividing armrests.

A hugely obese lady sat on my left and a grossly overweight man sat on my right. They took up all of their own space and they each took up a third of mine. However much I shuffled, they would not budge.

Because of the discomfort, I could not enjoy the play. I couldn’t sleep that night and the next day I could hardly walk because of the pain in my back.

Perhaps I should have asked them to contribute to the cost of my seat”.

Ianucci then regales us with a veritable lexicon of anti-fat terminology: “A fourth eyewitness writes

We saw a fat man come into our bus. A real lardy. We’re talking Mississippi mud pie on legs. A starch storer. A bingey bugger. Arms like Parma hams. Buttocks that waterfalled down the back of his trousers. Tits like ripe mangoes. Flaps of midriff bigger than furniture. A walking eclipse. Enough body fat to power Chad for six years”.

Although I bow to his linguistic prowess, it evinces a little too much relish to be considered as entirely parodic in intent, methinks.

In Fat Politics, Laurie Ann Lepoff confirms the pressures to which the fat are subject: “Even those closest to me, who loved me and thought they were doing so for my own good, tried to shame me into losing weight. It is as if fat women are under an obligation to be ashamed and disgusted with ourselves, to be constantly at war with food, to be always on a diet or promising to start one next week. We are made to feel that we don’t have the right to nurture ourselves, we are embarrassed to be caught eating! Who does she think she is anyway, eating? She’s fat. She should be eating cottage cheese and celery. Is it not our right to eat? Who the hell are you to be even thinking that you know what I should be doing for my own body and mind’s health, that self-deprivation is for my own good?” (in Lisa Schoenfelder and Barb Wieser (eds.), Shadow on a Tightrope, Writings by Women on Fat Oppression, Glasgow, Rotunda Press, 1983, p204).

As Lepoff indicates there is far more to our predicament than being showered with unsolicited advice by strangers: “There is little validation anywhere for our struggle. We are rarely encouraged to love ourselves (even by our ‘liberated’ feminist sisters), to consider ourselves beautiful, to nurture ourselves. We are expected to hate ourselves, deprive ourselves, and consider ourselves ugly. We maintain a shred of dignity by convincing ourselves that we are working on getting thin and that eventually we will be OK (thin). We desperately need each other’s support to feel strong, powerful, beautiful, and – most importantly – angry. Yet we are so accustomed to despising our own bodies that we despise the fat bodies of our sisters. We oppress each other outrageously. We get together and talk about diets. We don’t take our pain seriously. We don’t validate each other’s experience in this bitter, bigoted world. We skim over the agony of our lives under the assumption that everything that happens to us is really our fault and we deserve it for being fat. We don’t stand up against outrageous bigotry because we accept that it is somehow justified” (op. cit., p205).

Hadley Freeman returns to the issue of thinness in itself constituting sufficient grounds for being thrust into the public spotlight in The six-stone cover stars (The Guardian, 31^st August 2006), once again highlighting the hypocrisy inherent in gobbling up the accompanying contrived and strategic denunciations of their insubstantialness (both literal and metaphorical): “Golly, look at all the lovely bones! Nicole Richie, Amy Winehouse, Kate Bosworth: it’s hard to open a magazine without their hip bones jamming up your nose.

As happy chance would have it, I have spent enough time around dangerously ill anorexics to be more au fait with the subject that I’d like. Certainly, most of the above celebrities look like they are suffering from what is euphemistically called ‘issues with food’. But things are a little more complex than that.

In the main, these are women who palpably long to be famous. Becoming thin has brought them the front-cover status that previously eluded them.

Before her weight fell below six-and-a-half stone Nicole Richie was known, if at all, as Paris Hilton’s companion on an American reality TV programme. By the time I interviewed her last winter, so frail she could hardly walk across the restaurant, she was followed by four paparazzi. This week she is on the front covers of at least three glossies. Celebrity magazines might cloak themselves in moral rectitude by pointing out the medical risks these women are incurring by not eating, but the fact that they consistently put them on their covers confirms the celebrities’ belief. No longer does one have to get thin when one becomes famous – simply being skinny makes you famous, which is certainly an intriguing message to send out.

For these women, skinniness has brought them the desired fame. In many ways, their reasoning is more logical than that of your garden-variety anorexic because their justification for not eating is undeniably accurate – if they don’t eat they remain cover material. That these women flaunt their skinniness also proves that they are aware of their shape and want to put it on show, whereas one of the defining symptoms of traditional anorexia is hiding the imagined girth beneath loose, disguising clothes.

When Karen Carpenter died from a heart attack brought on by anorexia the shock felt was partly that she had been so ill. Sure, there were the occasional photos of Carpenter clutching her microphone with a bony wrist, but there was nothing like the weekly updates we get today about Richie’s ribs – we simply did not fetishise skinniness back then. Now we love to look at these women, and the reasons are complex and disgusting. There is an undoubted touch of envy at their willpower. In a newspaper column last week, the writer admitted, ‘I’d love to be as skinny as [them]…I can’t pretend I wouldn’t love to control my weight like [celebrities] can’. But there is also relief at seeing how being skinny can go wrong. It’s like watching a school friend get told off for relying too much on the source material when you couldn’t be bothered to write the essay at all.

Last week’s issue of Grazia, a magazine that has made more hay out of skinny celebrities than a racehorse devours in its lifetime, splashed on its cover photo of Richie. Every separate tendon and ligament was visible. This woman is visibly dying in front of us and we are gawpishly standing around like onlookers at a public beheading.

If any of these magazines – or any of us – really cared about Richie et al’s health as much as all the finger-wagging health warnings suggest, then we would leave them alone and stop looking at photos of them altogether. Then these women would no longer be able to cling on to the well-founded belief that their skinniness brings them fame. And think of it this way: if we all resent their willpower so much, coupled with a pious concern for their health, not looking at photos of them at all would be simultaneously the harshest revenge and the kindest solution”.

An article by Kira Cochrane deals with the implications of Kate Hudson’s triumph in a libel suit against the UK edition of National Enquirer, entitled New trend alert: starlets bite back! (The Guardian, 24^th July 2006): “And it is a victory that should, in theory, send a massive warning shot across the bows of the celeb press. After all, treating female celebrities’ bodies as public property, to be pored over and scrutinised to an obsessive degree – their weight fluctuations discussed in minute detail, the state of their fake tans, manicures, depilation and hair extensions rigorously unpicked – has become their main stock in trade. If stars can sue them for suggesting that they have an eating disorder, then, boy, are those guys in trouble!

While female stars’ bodies have always attracted attention (I’m sure that the first Hollywood vamp, Theda Bara, for instance, got occasional stick for her unapologetic plumpness), never has there been such open season on these women’s appearances”.

Like Mimi Spencer, Cochrane touches upon the underlying cultural shift: “There was a time when a female star’s biggest worry was that she would be pictured looking a few pounds overweight in, say, the Daily Mail, and systematically eviscerated for being undisciplined and allowing unsightly dimples to besmirch her once-unblemished skin. Now, though, that concern has been joined by the worry that she will be pictured looking a few pounds, or more, underweight, and accused of being ill, stupid, irresponsible, a bad role model and neurotic. Female celebrities have, I guess, a window of about three pounds within which their weight is allowed to fluctuate. Breach that and it’s knives out.

Not that this is how the stories are generally presented. Instead they’re often drenched in faux-concern for the women involved, whether it’s a bikinied Fern Britton (accused last year of risking her life, and therefore her children’s’ future happiness, by being overweight) or a hot-panted Victoria Beckham (also accused of risking her life and again, her children’s’ future happiness, by being underweight). This tone seeks to justify the stories by implying that they are being written out of concern for the celebrity’s health.

Which, of course, is ridiculous.

Because the real reason that women love these pictures is the intense schadenfreude they provoke. This impulse used to be sated by pictures of celebrities-gone-fat, but, as the population at large has got, uh, ever larger, the enjoyment of looking at such photos has been trumped by looking at ‘skinny-pics’. While photographs of fat stars remind us that the cake habit we’re fostering may be a problem, those of women who seem to disappear when side on (accompanied by captions that emphasise how silly/ill/self-obsessed they must be), make that second Crunchie bar of the day slip down all the better. Ha, readers can think, she’s been depriving herself all that time and – instead of having the desired effect of looking hot, hot, hot – everyone thinks she looks like crap!

The problem being that such enjoyment is, inevitably, fleeting. Because what this scrutiny of female celeb bodies actually adds up to is a constant reminder to women that our own looks are a source of scrutiny; that our bodies, too, are public property, to be discussed and criticised by friends and family. And, indeed, that they will often be the main thing that we are judged upon. This last point is rammed home by the current raft of female stars who seem to feature in the British press for no other reason than their weight loss”.

Schadenfreude, basking in the pleasure of witnessing someone else’s misery, is not pretty. It compensates us for our feelings of inadequacy. These celebrity women act as projections of our own longings and discontents; we spit our ire at them before throwing the mags into the recycling bin with barely a thought. The texts with their phantoms and fantasies are an emotional purgative, a temporary release. And, yes, we “fatties”, the reviled pariahs who are never permitted to rest easy in ourselves, to inhabit our bodies with ease, might want to take secret delight in the spectacle of the adored being given a taste of the medicine we are constantly forced to swallow. This is a side-effect of being forever pitted against each other. I do not look down on the slim, though I might feel excluded when they engage in social bonding chat, lamenting moving up from a size 10 to a size 12. I do not ask them to apologise for their shape. All I desire is to be accorded the same respect.

Cochrane pinpoints another unfortunate aspect of the phenomenon: “And the overall effect of these stories is to infantilise women. Their tone carries the suggestion that women need to be told how to take care of themselves and that we can’t make up our own minds about how to treat our bodies. This is emphasised by the fact that celebrities (…) are rarely granted any achievements, history or significance, except as physical beings”.

In her brilliant deconstruction of the contemporary consumerist surroundings in which we live, Sandra Lee Bartky (Femininity and Domination, New York and London, Routledge, 1990) launches a similar critique: “But the extent to which the identification of women with their bodies feeds an essentially infantile narcissism – an attitude of mind in keeping with our forced infantilisation in other areas of life – is, at least for me, an open question. Subject to the evaluating eye of the male connoisseur, women learn to evaluate themselves first and best. Our identities can no more be kept separate from the appearance of our bodies than they can be kept separate from the shadow-selves of the female stereotype (…) There is something obsessional in the preoccupation of many women with their bodies, although the magnitude of the obsession will vary somewhat with the presence or absence in a woman’s life of other sources of self-esteem and with her capacity to gain a living independent of her looks. Surrounded on all sides by images of perfect female beauty – for, in modern advertising, the needs of capitalism and the traditional values of patriarchy are happily married – of course we fall short. The narcissism encouraged by our identification with the body is shattered by these images” (p28).

According to Bartky none of us, fat or thin (though again the fat, identified as the negative against which the full glory of the thin becomes apparent, bear the brunt of censure and ridicule) are exempt from the wearying pursuit of “self-improvement”: “It is a fact that women in our society are regarded as having a virtual duty ‘to make the most of what we have’. But the imperative not to neglect our appearance suggests that we can neglect it, that it is within our power to make ourselves look better – not just neater and cleaner, but prettier, and more attractive. What is presupposed by this is that we don’t look good enough already, that attention to the ordinary standards of hygiene would be insufficient, that there is something wrong with us as we are. Here the ‘intimations of inferiority’ are clear: Not only must we continue to produce ourselves as beautiful bodies, but the bodies we have to work with are deficient to begin with. Even within an already inferiorised identity (i.e., the identity of one who is principally and most importantly a body), I turn out once more to be inferior, for the body I am to be, never sufficient unto itself, stands forever in need of plucking or painting, of slimming down or fattening up, of firming or flattening” (op. cit., p29).

Cochrane does not condemn us outright for our all too human frailty: “Of course, people are always going to look at other people; we are always going to compare and contrast ourselves, and that fascination is natural. The sheer intensity and misogyny of the current focus on women’s looks seems corrosive, though. It would be nice to think that Hudson’s libel win might at least stem this trend for a while, but that’s naïve. While pictures of ‘flawed’ celebrities continue to sell gossip mags, the cycle of female schadenfreude and resulting self hatred will keep whirring on. The fact is that in terms of magazine sales (it does, after all, take quite a glut of products to even attempt to live up to the ideal that’s being sold) these photographs really are worth their weight. And whether the celebrities they feature will ever be valued for anything other than their weight seems unlikely”.

Again, the passage above is worth contrasting with Bartky: “Under the current ‘tyranny of slenderness’ women are forbidden to become large or massive; they must take up as little space as possible. The very contours a woman’s body takes on as she matures – the fuller breasts and rounder hips – have become distasteful. The body by which a woman feels herself judged and which by rigorous discipline she must try to assume is the body of early adolescence, slight and unformed, a body lacking flesh and substance, a body in whose very contours the image of immaturity has been inscribed. The requirement that a woman maintain a smooth and hairless skin carries further the theme of inexperience, for an infantilised face must accompany her infantilised body, a face that never ages or furrows its brow in thought. The face of the ideally feminine woman must never display the marks of character, wisdom, and experience that we so admire in men.

To succeed in the provision of a beautiful or sexy body gains a woman attention and some admiration but little real respect and rarely any social power. A woman’s effort to master feminine body discipline will lack importance just because she does it: Her activity partakes of the general depreciation of everything female. In spite of unrelenting pressure to ‘make the most of what they have’, women are ridiculed and dismissed for the triviality of their interest in such ‘trivial’ things as clothes and make-up. Furthermore, the narrow identification of woman with sexuality and the body in a society that has for centuries displayed profound suspicion toward both does little to raise her status. Even the most adored female bodies complain routinely of their situation in ways that reveal an implicit understanding that there is something demeaning in the kind of attention they receive” (op. cit., p73).

Just how harmful the proffering of skinny celebrities can be is shown by Maxine Frith’s Most women would rather have a small waist than a big brain (The Independent, 9^th January, 2006): “The majority of women would prefer to be slimmer than have a higher IQ, instant wealth or a date with the celebrity of their dreams.

Nineteen out of 20 of the female population say that they place a higher priority on having a smaller waist than on their intelligence.

From a wish list that included never having money worries again, dating the A-list star of their choice or a genius-level IQ score, 51 per cent of women still plumped for a slimmer figure, according to a survey at tescodiets.com.

At a time when one in three women is overweight and a further one in five is obese, exerts said that there was still too much pressure on the female population to be slim.

Barbara Wilson, head of nutrition at tescodiets.com, said: ‘Women’s role models tend to be models and actresses, so there is more emphasis than ever placed upon physical perfection.

‘These statistics reveal just how much pressure women feel there is to be slim in today’s society’”.

Frith shed light on the absurdities of enforced adherence to the “battle of the bulge”: “One in three women admitted that they spend more time worrying about their weight than their finances, jobs or families. And while 29 per cent said their biggest dread was going to the dentist and 16 per cent cited looking for a new job, a massive 40 per cent admitted their worst fear was having to try on clothes in a shop’s communal fitting rooms.

One in three had lied to their friends about how much they weigh and one in four had tried to deceive their partner about their size.

Separate research by the magazine Lighter Life has found that nearly half of women give up their diet within just a week of starting it. One in five female dieters admit that they have hidden food and eaten it in secret while pretending to maintain their new regime.

Bar Hewlett, founder of the Lighter Life company, said: ‘Our survey reveals the extent of women’s desperation.

‘There have been women who hide food in the washing machine, under the plastic bag inside a cereal packet and even up their sleeves’”.

The Daily Mail’s take on the story (unattributed, 10^th January 2006) added little of substance, but did consult two women on whether the findings possessed any merit: “Two British businesswomen known for their brainpower dismissed the survey findings.

Nicola Horlick, the investment banker named Superwoman for juggling a City career with a large family, was appalled.

‘It has not been my experience that women aspire to minimise their brains,’ she said.

Jacqueline Gold, chief executive of the lingerie chain Ann Summers, was scathing: ‘This survey is dumbing down women,’ she said. ‘But women can afford to have smaller brains as they are so much bigger then men’s anyway’”.

I have to agree with the interviewees. I have never been apologetic about my academic achievements. They have been the standard according to which I have defined myself (which is one of the reasons why I so deeply resent being written off as nothing more than a stupid, indolent “lardball loser” before I have even opened my mouth).

In case it should be forgotten that the fat in our society are under siege (whereas the thin are not), I would just like to draw attention to a depressing recommendation made in the health care sector as catalogued by Julie Wheldon in NHS should deny obese women IVF, say doctors (Daily Mail, 31^st August 2006): “Doctors have called for obese women to be denied free IVF treatment on the Health Service.

The British Fertility Society said they should not receive such treatment unless they had already tried to be slim.

Those who were severely obese should be sidelined from IVF until they had actually lost weight.

Yesterday critics branded the idea as ‘unjustified discrimination’ against fat women.

But others welcomed the guidance, pointing out that obesity can harm fertility and increases the risks of pregnancy.

Given the current cash crisis in the NHS, tough decisions had to be made about priorities, they said.

The society’s proposals will be sent to all primary care trusts responsible for paying for NHS fertility treatment, which are currently left to interpret official guidelines on their own”.

This is an assault on our dignity and access to equal treatment masquerading as rationality. Although I am not disputing that there is a potential for the problems the doctors quoted allude to, the likelihood of damage should be assessed on a case by case basis. Applied wholesale and indiscriminately it merely serves to filter out those who cannot afford to pay for IVF themselves (perhaps fat phobia has assumed such epidemic proportions that denying IVF to potential carriers of the fat gene is a means of extirpating undesirables before they are conceived). Being fat does not automatically mean being chronically unfit and suffering from high blood pressure and the host of other conditions trotted out at every available opportunity to deter us from putting on a few pounds: “And those with a body mass index of 36 should be denied IVF until they have lost weight.

To have a BMI of 36, a 5ft4in woman would need to weigh more than 15 stone.

The society also suggested women with a BMI of 30 should embark on a weight loss programme before starting treatment.

Chairman Dr Mark Hamilton said the recommendations were based on safety concerns for mother and baby.

‘If a woman is severely obese then there are real medical issues about the safety of her being pregnant,’ he said.

‘There are hazards for the mother and baby and problems can develop with complications such as miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, high blood pressure and diabetes.

‘If a woman is severely obese it would not be wise for her to get pregnant until she reduced her weight’”.

Wheldon endeavours to present both sides: “Josephine Quintavalle of Comment on Reproductive Ethics said: ‘In the case of obesity it is a known and proven fact that it is difficult to get pregnant when you are overweight.

‘The very logical response to that is ‘lose weight’ and it therefore seems blindly obvious that any suggestions on those lines are in the interests of curing infertility without wasting money. We are talking about limited funding and how it is allocated’.

But Dr Evan Harris, Liberal Democrat member of the Commons science and technology committee, said the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence had already set out guidance on this which did not suggest banning treatment for obese women.

‘This is unjustified discrimination as fat women are being singled out for exclusion from treatment altogether,’ he said.

‘NICE already looked at this in huge detail and concluded such a cut off was not justified’”.

An insert accompanying the article focuses on one particular case: “Debra Howarth, 39, was devastated when told she was too fat for fertility treatment on the NHS.

She admits she was about two stone overweight at the time, with a BMI above 30.

But she felt well and did not have any health problems linked to being overweight.

Luckily Mrs Howarth, an NHS kitchen supervisor from Barnsley, and her husband David won some money and were able to pay for IVF treatment themselves. To their delight she became pregnant first time and is due to give birth in October.

But she is adamant that weight guidelines for NHS fertility treatment are unfair.

‘I have worked all my life and paid my national insurance and never asked for anything. The only thing I wanted in life was a family and because of my weight they said no. I think it is really unfair. It is all wrong’”.

An editorial in The Independent (31^st August 2006) A rational approach attempted to deflect criticisms that the proposed restrictions represent overt discrimination: “The very suggestion that obese women could be denied IVF treatment on the NHS has prompted a predictable outcry. The reason is that many detect a whiff of moral censure, just as they did when it was proposed that smokers should not be considered for major heart surgery. Smoking and obesity are fast becoming the behavioural crimes of our age. It is all too tempting for those so afflicted that the health establishment is trying to penalise them still further.

As with smokers and heart operations, however, those who are now objecting to what they see as a new form of discrimination are very much barking up the wrong tree. The latest recommendation comes not from the NHS – which could be accused of looking for new ways of penny-pinching – but from the British Fertility Society. As such, it constitutes the combined wisdom of leading specialists in the field. And their rationale has nothing to do with obesity as such, but with the effect of being overweight on the likely success of treatment.

In an ideal world, the number of IVF clinics would exceed demand. Any woman who had difficulty in conceiving would be referred automatically and granted as many courses of NHS-funded treatment as she chose. But this is not an ideal world. Across the country, the NHS is nowhere near meeting the Government-decreed requirement to provide women with three courses of publicly funded treatment.

The intervention of the BFS is an effort to ensure IVF treatment on the NHS is provided to those most likely to benefit. Its research shows that women who are obese – a condition which it defines quite exactly as having a body mass index of 36 or more – are far less likely to conceive as a result of IVF. The same applies to women who are deemed to be greatly underweight or who are over 40. The BFS suggests these groups of women should also be excluded from free treatment.

The other purpose of its recommendations is to hasten the end of the so-called postcode lottery for IVF, which causes so much justified resentment. In many parts of the country, women who are obese, or even simply overweight, already find it difficult to be accepted for treatment. If there are measurable criteria for granting or denying a woman free treatment in future, this is about as fair as it can get.

Of course, there must be room for specialists to exercise discretion. And, of course, the wealthier will pay for treatment, just as they can at present. But where free treatment is concerned, there is an urgent need for a system, backed by clinical data, that makes the best possible use of public money”.

If this punitive decision had been an isolated manifestation of fat-loathing, I might have been more amenable to the author’s claim. There have already been calls to ration health care by excluding the lower income brackets who happen not to conform with the chart definitions of “normality” (the authoritativeness of which are increasingly disputed by members of the medical profession itself). When taken together with the fat being routinely turned down as candidates for adoption (fitness for parenting being a fundamental criterion of social acceptance) it assumes a more sinister aspect. Make no mistake: we will have to stop accepting the guilt imposed upon us and stand up for our liberties before it is too late.

“The negative reactions and anxieties aroused by obesity cannot be adequately explained by the argument that obesity is unhealthy. Many other things we do to ourselves are unhealthy, yet they do not incite the same kind of shame, hostility, and disapproval. Furthermore, many people have strong reactions to weight even when a person is not fat enough for health to be affected.
Clearly, obesity has become mythologized in our culture into something more than a physical condition or a potential health hazard. Being overweight is now imbued with powerful symbolic and psychological meanings that deeply affect the person’s identity in the world. In other words, the state of being fat is felt to express something basic about a person’s character and personality”
Marcia Millman, Such a Pretty Face (New York, W. W. Norton, 1980, ppx-xi, emphasis in original)

“The seeming conspiracy against childhood obesity begun by the medical, parental and childhood worlds during the 1960s was an illusion produced by the coincidence of three separate movements culminating at the same time: a medical world with sadly triumphant numbers on the permanence of weight; a parental world with three generations’ experience of weighing their children and dieting themselves; a childhood world with visual and tactile evidence that weight, like sin or size tags, might be carried forever”
Hillel Schwartz, Never Satisfied (New York, Doubleday, 1986, pp295-6)

Apple-cheeked babies with plump limbs beaming at the lens were once the symbol of health and prosperity, their radiance a triumph of progress in the affluent West, testimony to the absence of disease, embodying hope for the future. Our increasingly intolerant, visually-oriented, snap-judgement culture now encourages us to regard the slightest accumulation of adipose tissue as a sign of morbidity. We look at their dumpy little frames with unease, they are tainted, aware that the prospect of being ostracised hangs over them even before they have acquired the power of speech. Our vision is clouded by medical discourse and the relentless pressures of the diet industry.

For the first few years of their lives, before they are plunged into the competitive environment of school, our offspring could expect a brief amnesty in which grown-ups would shrug off the anxieties gnawing at them in the knowledge that their son or daughter would soon shoot up and the excess pounds would melt away. Laying down reserves for the growth spurts ahead seemed natural, a biological imperative rather than a cause for guilt or a sense of failure, a temporary state as opposed to a life (or in the prophecy of doom phraseology of the warnings and reminders to which we are relentlessly exposed, death) sentence.

In the playground, the peers of those who do not conform to the standards stipulated by the charts or the self-absorbed models staring vacuously from the hoardings or flouncing down the catwalks on the TV screens have no qualms about expressing their contempt, Fatso the kindest of epithets the chubby can expect. Their detractors have not yet acquired the social grace of more subtle condemnation, the pity, the awkwardness and faint embarrassment of uncertainty as to how to respond when they encounter adults who "could stand to shed a few kilos", particularly those who, like myself, are unrepentant and do not offer the implied apology of chatter about diets. So the fat children are isolated by the teasing and the sniggers, their confidence undermined, their defectiveness vilified. They might adopt the tactic of joining in, making fun of themselves, attempting to turn their bulk to their advantage as the class comic, self-denigration preferable to exclusion, to stigma and shame.

My Father had a sweet tooth and, after testing the temperature of the bottle’s contents by dripping the milk onto his forearm, he would feed me with "infant formula" modified to his own tastes. With added sugar, as he found the powder too bland when mixed with water. Perhaps I learned before I could consciously formulate the thought that love and sweetness were inextricably linked, though this is not to apportion blame. Towards the end of my years at primary I was fleshier than most as the choir and class photographs testify, although the excess weight did vanish until pregnancy. Now I am reconciled to my "imperfection", content for the most part, but not immune to the occasional pang of longing for the status and power that thinness confers.

The "contamination" of fat is now considered an evil at any age, as revealed by Maxine Frith’s piece in The Independent, 5^th May 2006, Researchers expose the myth of ‘disappearing’ puppy fat: “The concept of childhood ‘puppy fat’ that disappears in teenage years is a myth, researchers say. Children who are overweight or obese at 11 remain so through adolescence and probably into adulthood, a study in the British Medical Journal found.

Experts said obesity was established earlier than previously thought and dismissing the problem as puppy fat could have serious health implications later. More than a quarter of children in the UK are overweight or obese and the proportion has trebled in the past 20 years.

Researchers from the Cancer Research UK health behaviour unit at University College London followed almost 6,000 children from age 11 to 16. They found that at the age of 11 up to 19.3 per cent of the children were overweight and a further 6.9 per cent were obese. Over the next five years, 7 per cent of the children moved from being in the ‘normal’ range to being obese and overweight. A further 7.6 per cent moved out of the overweight and obese categories into the normal range. Professor Jane Wardle, lead author of the study, said: ‘Children who are overweight or obese when they start secondary school are likely to leave education in the same condition’.

While the proportion of children classed as overweight fell slightly there was a corresponding increase in those considered obese, so overall the number of pupils with a weight problem remained the same”. The habit of self-surveillance can never be instilled too young, it would seem, the penalties for failure of the utmost severity.

Media Depictions

Childhood is no longer portrayed as a carefree period, exempt from the fears that beset maturity. There can be no respite in the battle against the mortal enemy, even one spare tyre indicative of an endless succession of woes, trouble literally stored up for the future. So our progeny are considered appropriate headline fodder. Fiona McRae set the ball rolling in the Daily Mail (27^th February 2006) with Children aged nine falling victim to ‘adult’ diabetes: “Soaring levels of obesity are causing 100 children a year to be diagnosed with a form of diabetes which normally affects only middle-aged adults.

The number of cases of Type 2 diabetes in children has risen tenfold in the past five years, with a record 100 new cases in under 16s between 2004 and 2005.

Data from GPs’ surgeries shows that children as young as nine are being diagnosed with the condition, which until lately was thought to be the preserve of overweight adults. Doctors blamed obesity for creating a diabetes timebomb [sic] which could condemn the younger generation to a life of ill health, including a higher risk of heart disease, stroke, eye and kidney problems.

And they claimed that the figures, obtained by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, were likely to be the tip of the iceberg, with tens of thousands more overweight youngsters at risk of developing the condition.

A further 60,000 children are thought to be suffering from weight-related metabolic syndrome – a combination of conditions including high blood pressure and raised cholesterol – which is thought to precede Type 2 diabetes.

Dr Julian Shield, the Bristol University paediatrician who carried out the research, said: ‘Until now, we had no idea how many children were being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. It is a shocking figure’.

Neville Rigby, of the International Obesity Task Force, said: ‘The childhood obesity timebomb [sic] has already exploded. The issue now is facing up to a rapidly worsening scale of problems’.

A recent survey in England found that 18 per cent of schoolchildren were overweight and a further six per cent could be classed as obese".

I would feel completely devastated if my son (just turned fifteen) were to contract diabetes or any chronic condition of comparable severity, condemning him to a life of calculations and endless agonising over every morsel. I do not seek to deny, downplay or in any way trivialise the consequences of these diseases or the desirability of averting them. What I do object to, however, is the loathing (whether expressed outright or concealed beneath a pious veneer of concern) of individuals belonging to Class O (overweight and obese), the “gym-shy, triple cheeseburger-guzzling” pariahs (to summon up but two of the clichés), the patronising assumptions of the smug skinnies. The propensity of the print media for sensationalism, indulging in hyperbole to render arid statistics newsworthy, results from the commercial constraints under which newspapers operate. The temptation to blow any perceived problem out of all proportion to boost sales is ever-present. The simplicity and pristine clarity of the eye-catching headline bears little relationship to the complexity and messiness of daily interaction. Thus the question of the contributory factors to fat is reduced to a matter of simple personal discipline (thereby absolving governments and mega corporations of the merest hint of culpability), creating a false impression of transparency. The residue of our ancient tradition weighs heavy on us, gluttony the supreme vice, deadliest of sins in spite of our supposed secularisation (the dieter’s story one of redemptive transformation and elevation to grace). The greed which was once deemed reprehensible in a context of shortage (where ample size advertised access to plenty) is now a badge of low status (not that I subscribe to the lazy equation of fat equalling greed, or to thinness as a superior state). Lack of publicity (or access) to alternative sources of information hampers our ability to form an accurate picture of the true dimensions of what is constantly referred to as an "epidemic". Dissenting (heretical) voices are drowned out in the clamour: the inevitability of disease and decline the sole message allowed through. The overweight are not permitted a shred of comfort, let alone happiness or peace of mind. Susie Orbach, in Calories are not immoral (The Guardian, 10^th March 2006), provides a corrective to the received wisdom of the panic-mongers: “We know that eating in a guilty or surreptitious manner affects how your food is metabolised. It simply is not a question of calories in, calories out. Adiposity depends upon many factors, including metabolism and set point. Our metabolism is a labile thing. Eating just what you want, when you are hungry for it, and stopping when you are full, is the only way to ensure a stable weight, the weight you are meant to be.

With the government’s declaration of an Obesity Crisis, the food and pharmaceutical industries are revelling in commercial opportunities that await them to scoop up the problem with pills and specialised foods. But (…) beware. The epidemiological analyses that originally had the US Surgeon General putting obesity-related deaths at around 400,000 have been reanalysed, and we find they’ve dropped to less than 26,000. Not good by any means, but not enough to drive our own House of Commons committee on obesity and the Department of Health to respond robotically. Reanalysis also shows that the ‘overweight’, that’s to say people with a body mass index (BMI) of 25 to 29.9, live longer on average than those with a ‘normal’ BMI of between 18.5 and 24.9.

Of course, the facts don’t penetrate, because we’ve bought into the scare and an aesthetic that fat starts the minute you can pinch a bit of flesh. It is a form of local terrorism aimed at our bodies. For most people, the problem is not their fat intake or their actual size, but the torment associated with fat in their minds. They imagine they are too large, they feel that they must get smaller. They worry about food intake incessantly. An epidemic of eating and body image problems plagues us(…)We’ve conspired with the idea that obesity is a kind of pandemic-like disease against which we must be ever-vigilant. Fat, we’ve come to believe, is a curse on the culture, which we have a moral duty to combat”.

The columns and editorials peddle Angst, amplifying it in the process. They instruct us on what is acceptable and what is beyond toleration where other guides to conduct have been discarded, latching onto culturally-stoked insecurities to exploit them while before attention ebbs (relying on the brevity of the concentration span itself a by-product of necessity to focus on the new indigenous to consumerism). Alongside the soul-searching legacy of messianic religion, we have the fear of modernity, a parable of decadence, decline and loss of innocence contrasting the primordial bliss of frolicking in fields with choking on the evil smoke emitted by dark, Satanic mills. We feel that we have lost control as well as direction, the old certainties undermined (I, for one, do not mourn their purported loss, which put the gloss of divine sanction on oppression as a ploy to remove it from legitimate contestation). There can be no return to the rural “idyll” or escape from the gadgetry of the information revolution. We are plagued by some inchoate worry that we have let our children down, projecting our accumulated unease on them. We cannot protect them adequately in their vulnerability and any threat to them provokes a fervour of hand-wringing. The debilitating effects triggered by obesity (according to medical tenets so entrenched that to dispute them is to expose oneself to charges of ignorance at best and intellectual and moral bankruptcy or culpable lack of responsibility at worst) are therefore added to the litany of woes afflicting the youth of our civilisation, bundled together with ADHD and the predations of paedophiles (a classic instance of one moral panic feeding into another).

Perhaps our visceral emotional response can be attributed to the fact that they literally embody our hopes for the future. Perhaps the zeal to fight the flab from the moment the infant emerges from the womb has a noble motive, the wish to spare our daughters and sons torment. Perhaps it is tinged with guilt at having failed the test ourselves, chided by the tape measure or the plastic dog that barks admonition every time we open the fridge door. Perhaps we sense that it is too late for “recalcitrant” adults (as if weight loss were a matter of willpower alone) too set in their ways to mend them, but maybe, just maybe we can save our children. My intention is to present the raw materials of opinion and offer a critical analysis from a renegade, fat-friendly perspective.

Jeremy Laurance (The Independent, 28^th February 2006) sounded the alarm in Children at risk of early death as obesity rises: “Today’s children may die sooner than their parents because of the Government’s failure to curb the explosion in obesity, a report warns today.

Almost one in 10 children were obese in 1995, but the proportion had risen to just over one in seven by 2003. The number of children diagnosed as suffering adult type-2 diabetes, which normally affects overweight people in middle-age, has risen ten-fold over the past five years to 100 a year.

In a stinging attack, the National Audit Office (NAO), the Healthcare Commission and the Audit Commission joined forces to accuse the Government of confusion, delay and a lack of leadership over efforts to combat obesity. The key public health target to halt the rise in child obesity by 2010 is in danger of being missed, the influential bodies say. The target, which was set in July 2004, aimed to reduce obesity in children aged five to 10.

A survey of 35 countries by the World Health Organisation in 2004 found that the diets of British children were among the unhealthiest in Europe. Snacking on chocolate and sweets and carbonated drinks were contributing to their rapidly expanding waistlines.

Steve Bundred, the chief executive of the Audit Commission, said: ‘If the trend continues, this generation will be the first for many decades that doesn’t live for as long as their parents’.

The overall cost of obesity to the NHS is currently around £1bn, with a further £2.3bn to £2.6bn for the economy as a whole. But if obesity continues to increase, Mr Bundred said the cost to the economy alone could rise to £3.6bn by 2010, plus at least £1bn on the NHS bill.

The House of Commons Select Committee on Health warned two years ago that by 2020 half of all children would be obese and there would be an epidemic of amputations and blindness caused by the rise of obesity linked diseases such as diabetes.

The report said there was a lack of leadership at all levels, confusion about measuring progress towards the target and delays in publishing guidance, which meant organisations risked wasting money on ineffective interventions.

The report’s recommendations include the need for better local guidance on initiatives to tackle obesity, such as increasing the use of school sports facilities. It also said that the three government departments responsible for the target needed to work closely together to provide strong leadership”.

The utter devastation experienced by a parent at the death of their child is unimaginable. As late as the Victorian era, child mortality was fairly common, but was compensated for to a degree by family size. We are the victims of our own success in eradicating illness and unsanitary conditions. Nowadays it is the norm for every child to attain adulthood and so we invest in one or two as opposed to a half a dozen or more. The loss of an only child in a society founded on the denial of mortality is both a statistical aberration and the ultimate trauma and it is the prospect (no matter how remote in reality) of facing it that the article relies upon for emotional punch.

With the spread of literacy and the affordability of TV sets politicians have become more visible, if not vastly more accountable. Grinning manically as they announce policy initiatives they need to be seen to be doing something to justify their privileged position, their salaries and their perks. Hence the popularity of targets, a standard against which their performance can be measured. The problem with targets for the ordinary citizen, however, is that they beg intervention, an expansion in the powers of government and concomitant increase in intrusion into what was once held to be off-limits to the state. Because they can mean the difference between winning and losing an election, targets too often take precedence over lesser considerations, such as feasibility or individual welfare. Everything else has a habit of becoming expendable in the interests of staying in charge. Remedies to the problem defined by the target can range from the sublime to the ridiculous, from the under-ambitious to the completely disproportionate, but the erstwhile government’s grim determination to deliver at all costs remains fairly constant.

Sarah Boseley (The Guardian, 28^th February 2006) reacted to the same document in Call for faster action to cut child obesity: “The government will miss its target for halting the rise in obesity in children under 11 without clearer leadership from the top, the National Audit Office, Audit Commission and Healthcare Commission warn in a joint report today.

The target of stopping the rise by 2010 was set in 2004, but plans to tackle the growing numbers of children as young as five through diet and exercise at school and at home have hardly got off the starting blocks, the report makes clear.

The scale of the rise in childhood obesity is alarming. In 1997, 9.6% of children under 10 were obese. By 2003, that had risen to 13.7%. The cost of obesity to the NHS is about £1bn a year. On top of that are indirect costs to the economy of between £2.3bn and £2.6bn a year, which could rise by 2010 to £3.6bn a year.

The report points out that the issue involves ‘changing the behaviour of children and their parents, and attitudes in society generally’. A number of initiatives are planned and some are underway, but there is little evidence yet to show whether programmes to improve children’s diet and increase the amount of exercise they take will work well enough to meet the target. The government has published guidance on weighing and measuring children, but there are no clear figures yet about the extent of obesity in individual areas.

The report warns that organisations are unclear about their roles because they have not yet received proper guidance.

Anna Walker, chief executive of the Healthcare Commission, said: ‘If we are serious about tackling childhood obesity then all government agencies and organisations must work together more effectively. Those of us involved in inspection and assessment must ensure that this partnership working really takes place nationally and locally’”.

Jenny Hope responded on behalf of the Daily Mail (28^th February 2006) in A quarter of youngsters are now obese: “The cost of childhood and adult obesity to the health service is around £1billion. There is a further £2.3billion to £2.6billion cost to the economy as a whole – this includes lost productivity. But Mr Bundred [chief executive of the Audit Commission] said the cost to the economy alone could rise to £3.6billion by 2010, with more than £1billion in costs to the NHS – a bill close to £5billion”.

Here we gain an insight into the real driving force behind the Government’s apparent altruistic interest: cutting the NHS bill. Appealing to the selfish instincts of taxpayers is hardly a new tactic, but in this instance it is likely to have the pernicious side-effect of exacerbating already endemic hatred of the fat: a divisive “not only do we have to look at their bulging arses, but we have to fork out for treating their problems as well” mentality. Ministers are quite indifferent to whether we live or die, as long as it does not dent their popularity ratings. Millman dispatches this line of reasoning with characteristic eloquence : “It is somewhat understandable that fat people might be resented for driving up health costs (although the costs due to obesity are miniscule compared, say, with the costs of cancer caused by environmental and occupational hazards or the enormous profits of the health industry). But the health-cost argument is a paltry explanation for the sentiments aroused. A person with heart disease who smokes or works too hard may be criticized by friends for his habits, but he does not inspire the horror, loathing, speculation, repugnance, and avoidance that very fat people do.

Perhaps mere visibility plays a part. Some would argue that smoking doesn’t make a person physically unattractive, but fat does. Even so, there is more to the process of perceiving fat people as characters who are disturbingly unresponsive to social control.

Being slim is highly valued in our society. A fat person violates that value and therefore offends society’s expectations. This is especially true for women, whose worth and achievement are judged largely on the basis of how they look. And when expectations are violated, explanations and interpretations inevitably follow. Because of these further interpretations, the fat person’s differentness comes to be perceived as more than physical” (op. cit., p70).

Hope carries on: “The obesity target is the responsibility of the Department of Health, Department for Education and Skills and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

The report warned that a ‘lack of timely guidance’ had made organisations unclear about their roles.

As a result, those further down the delivery chain may be wasting resources on interventions that fail to target at-risk children.

The report’s recommendations include the need for better local guidance on initiatives, such as increasing use of school sports facilities outside school hours”.

One unsympathetic response masquerading as satire was columnist Philip Hensher (The Independent, 2^nd March 2006), lashing out at “soft targets” in Knock and, er, waddle: “The Government, rightly concerned, is embarking on a number of projects, though one might point out that it’s much more the responsibility of parents than something which can effectively be addressed by authority. It’s difficult to imagine the parent who would be indifferent to a child’s evident obesity.

Still, let’s look on the bright side. The other day, a child who had been told about the now obsolete game of Knock Down Ginger banged on my door and started to make off. As it happened, I was sitting by the door, and was outside to see a lard-arsed juvenile waddling off breathlessly. Even at my advanced age, I had little problem in catching up with the little fatty and giving him a piece of my mind. That wouldn’t have happened with the whippet-like youth of yesteryear: let’s give thanks for small mercies”.

Jeremy Laurance (The Independent, 6^th March 2006) returned to the fray with his Stark warning on childhood obesity problem: “On every continent, child’s waistlines are expanding, driven by low energy lifestyles and high energy foods. ‘Global fattening’ poses an equal threat to global warming, according to obesity experts. Estimates published today suggest that the proportion of school-age children in Europe who are obese has risen almost 50 per cent since the late 1990s and will nearly double to 6.4 million by 2010.

The number who are overweight is expected to grow by 1.3 million to a total of 26 million across the EU in four years, more than one-third of the child population, the International Association for the Study of Obesity (IASO) says.

Similar increases have been seen in North and South America, the Middle East and the Pacific region, the association says. As prosperity grows, so do bottoms. Reports last week suggested the West’s passion for fast food may be on the turn, with restaurant closures announced by McDonald’s in the UK and a collapse in profits at Britvic, the soft drinks manufacturer. Sales of healthy alternatives and of fruit and vegetables are sharply up.

But the change will come too late for many. The accretion of adipose tissue on developing bodies is already having a damaging effect on health.

More than a million children in Europe are estimated to have high blood pressure or high cholesterol levels, outing them at risk of heart disease, and 1.4 million may have the early stages of liver disorder, the association says. Overeating has resulted in 20,000 children suffering from so-called ‘adult onset’ or type-2 diabetes, not previously seen in children, while more than 400,000 have impaired glucose tolerance, a pre-diabetic stage which puts them at sharply increased risk of the condition.

Professor Philip James, chairman of the International Obesity task Force, the research and advocacy arm of the IASO, said that the problem was not confined to Europe. ‘We may well be markedly underestimating the morbidity relating to this problem,’ he said.

Almost half of children in North and South America will be overweight in four years on present trends. The problem of obesity in schools is described by the US surgeon general as ‘every bit as threatening to us as is the terrorist threat we face today’.

A sign of the change can be seen in the transformation of American football players. In 1960, a 250lb player was considered a giant. This year more than 550 players weighing over 300lbs (21 stone) were on NFL rosters. The average US soldier is 22lbs heavier than his Second World War counterpart.

Tim Lobstein, co-ordinator of research on child obesity for the task force, said: ‘The obesity estimates are very cautious but extremely worrying. When we looked at the figures it was astonishing that nearly half of children in both North and South America could be overweight in just four years’ time. In Europe we are seeing substantial increases with overweight numbers at 38 per cent – up 60 per cent on the level that we saw throughout the 1990s’.

He added: ‘It reinforces the need for immediate action to stop this runaway trend. We can only do this if we seriously…cut down on the consumption of empty extra calories in high fat and high sugar food products, and do much more to improve children’s opportunity to be active’”.

Industrial development and emulation of the prosperous West are shown to entail a flight from the land to urban centres, detaching populations from opportunities to grow their own food. It also implies the adoption of employer profit margin dictated, regimented working practices, such as long hours spent away from the home in sedentary occupations. Depending on how cities are planned, it might also lead to the separation of food purchasing opportunities from residential areas (sprawling hypermarkets offering rock bottom prices and thereby eliminating potential competition from small retailers), a proliferation of fast-food outlets stepping in to cater for demand. The human organism is designed to lay down reserves as a safeguard against famine, the abundance we currently enjoy the absolute exception in the history of our species (and very possibly only temporary). Our hard won evolutionary survival mechanism turns against us (always assuming that we regard fat as ugly and an unwelcome reminder of our animality). In other words, being fat in an environment where high-calorie foods are readily and regularly available is normal (in the quest by the elite to set itself apart from and above the “inferior” masses, however, normality was ever eschewed and despised).

The Daily Mail (30^th March, unattributed) reported on a conference organised by the charity Diabetes UK in Obesity ‘causes diabetes in 1,000 children’: “University of Leicester experts found that only 37 per cent of children in urban areas walked to school – compared to 67 per cent living in the suburbs.

Almost half admitted watching television, videos or playing computer games for four or more hours a day.

The study was conducted in inner city schools in a deprived area in Leicester with 3,150 pupils aged 11 to 15 years. Most were from a South Asian background. Their genetic make-up gives them a six times higher risk of getting Type 2 diabetes”.

Quiet country lanes are not notorious for road rage recklessness and articulated lorries clogging arterial roads, nor are parents in small communities where neighbours can identify each other by sight quite so prone to dread about their progeny being snatched from the streets. Distances between home and school premises might not be so great, all factors in the decision as to whether to make the run in the morning and afternoon.

My generation might have been captivated by Pong, Pacman or Space Invaders, yet those primitive though charming amusements (now referred to as “retro games”) cannot possibly be compared to the sophistication and sheer range of electronic distractions now available. I fully understand the temptation to while away the afternoon (and evening and entire night) battling it out online in front of the computer screen. Even the stress-relief of a few lengths of the pool cannot hold a candle to the satisfaction derived from erasing enemy armies from the map, animated pixel by pixel. Children are kept at home to keep them safe not only from the traffic, but also from the marauding gangs of muggers who would stab them to death in an instant for their mobile phones (here I quote liberally from the stock villains that haunt middle-class dreams), a rational decision based on the information available – horror stories in the media. No amount of willpower will wish computer and console games away.

Note also the final snippet of information concerning the location and the sample studied. Through no fault of their own or of their parents (beyond not being affluent enough to move to a more expensive area, hardly something to be upbraided for) the children probably inhabit surroundings where take-aways abound and fresh fruit and vegetables are hard to come by. Tins and freezer chest contents are in all likelihood the staples simply due to non-availability of alternatives. Moreover, it is methodologically unsound to extrapolate to the population as a whole a trend present in a group with a recorded and recognised genetic predisposition absent from those of differing descent.

The Independent on Sunday published companion articles on child obesity on 2^nd April 2006. The first, by Roger Dobson, quantified the problem, 700,000 children are obese…: “More than half a million British schoolchildren are obese, according to a major new study that warns of soaring rates of diabetes, liver failure and heart problems among the young.

Researchers say that more than 160,000 children are displaying signs that they will develop heart disease. At least 150,000 have high blood pressure ad high cholesterol levels. And a similar number are likely to develop liver disease early in life.

The revelation that over-eating and lack of exercise has placed the health of the nation’s young people in jeopardy and made 700,000 of them obese comes from a Europe-wide study by the London-based International Obesity Taskforce.

The study calculates that 28 per cent of boys and 36 per cent of girls in the UK are now overweight or obese and estimates that the number of overweight children in Europe will top 26 million within four years. It will then increase at the rate of 1.3 million a year.

The research also shows for the first time that there are signs of Type 2 diabetes in 4,000 children. The disease is normally associated with old age, but the researchers warn that it could strike 60,000 youngsters in the near future.

Although the number of obese children has been increasing, and it’s known that obesity is associated with disease, there have been difficulties in calculating the scale of health problems because in most cases symptoms are not yet apparent.

With little or no screening for signs of high blood pressure, raised cholesterol and diabetes, most children and their parents remain unaware of any problems. Even those who have Type 2 diabetes will not yet know it.

But statistical analysis of 39 health and demographic studies convinced the researchers that the continent now faces a crisis that was avoidable”.

It is the latter argument, the avoidability factor that leads to the stigmatisation of Class O. If we had not been so indolent slouching on the sofa glued to the box and if we had just refrained from stuffing ourselves with those cream buns and chocolate éclairs we would not have to swallow insulin tablets with every meal. However, the avoidability issue is never more closely investigated; indeed, it is actively suppressed from the debate in favour of simplistic and misleading finger-wagging.

The stern warning of the dire fate awaiting the overweight or obese (it never does emerge clearly how many are overweight, how overweight they are and how many are obese or how obese they are), who are lumped together indiscriminately (I am not suggesting a “hierarchy of fat” here with the overweight less “morally reprehensible” or “more deserving of sympathy” than the obese, simply pointing out that to the mind of most journalists one ounce over the culturally defined odds is a passport to misery and premature demise). As the most fleeting perusal of the articles reveals, the paragraph on diabetes, heart disease and so on is never omitted. It is not possible for the reader to be unaware of the risks routinely associated with fat. Dobson very much takes for granted the stereotype that fat people never exercise or allow an unprocessed, cooked-to-nutritional-death vegetable or piece of fruit to pass their lips.

He continues: “Dr Tim Lobstein, who led the project for the taskforce, said: ‘More than 160,000 obese children in the UK, are likely to show a range of indicators for cardio-vascular disease, including high blood pressure, raised blood cholesterol levels, and insulin resistance’.

The research showed that around 58,000 British children have impaired glucose intolerance, an early sign of an increased risk of diabetes, and that around 150,000 will have high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

‘The glucose intolerance means their pancreas is not able to respond properly to sugar,’ said Dr Lobstein.

‘These children are unlikely to be aware of the problem. In the early stages of diabetes you basically don’t show any symptoms. There are a whole range of health problems these children are walking around with’.

He added that the ‘burden of disease’ among obese children was high. ‘Paediatric services need to consider their ability to screen and treat children if we are to avoid a substantial rise in chronic obesity-related disease among young adults over the next decade,’ he explained.

Last week, a study by Diabetes UK claimed that as many as 1,000 children had Type 2 diabetes (…) Now that appears to be a conservative estimate. The charity’s annual conference was also told by University of Leicester experts that only 37 per cent of children in urban areas now walk to school.

Almost half admitted to watching television or playing computer games for four or more hours a day”.

Dobson’s effort was paired with Steve Bloomfield and Katy Guest’s …which is why Jamie is back on the offensive over school dinners: “The number of children eating school dinners has suffered a dramatic fall – and Jamie Oliver is to blame. New figures show that nearly 400,000 pupils have turned their backs on hot school meals following Oliver’s Channel 4 series highlighting unhealthy dinners. While the celebrity chef hoped his ‘Feed Me Better’ campaign would encourage more schools to improve their offerings it has also persuaded hundreds of thousands of parents to give their children a packed lunch.

Caterers say ‘the Jamie Oliver effect’ has led to a 12.5 per cent fall in children opting for school dinners. Kevin McKay, chairman of the Local Authority Caterers Association (LACA), said even schools that were already serving healthy dinners had suffered a drop. ‘People’s perception of meals is what they saw on the TV,’ Mr McKay said. ‘Many authorities were already doing healthy meals. They also saw a decrease. More and more children are now bringing their own packed lunches in, which have proved to be not as healthy’.

But Oliver hit back last night, appealing to parents to campaign for their local schools to improve standards and calling on the Government to increase investment in school dinners. Packed lunches, Oliver (…) [said] ‘are the biggest evil. Even the best packed lunch is a shit packed lunch. If you had seen some of the things I have seen over the past few years…It’s disgraceful. I have seen packed lunches that are just last night’s reheated chips, or crisps and chocolate bars’.

Many packed lunches also have a soft or fizzy drink. It was revealed yesterday that 26 soft drinks were found to contain high levels of a cancer-causing chemical, benzene. Four of the drinks have been removed from supermarket shelves.

Oliver added: ‘If parents really are opting out of school dinners because of my programme, well it’s all right for the schools and boroughs to get offended if they are doing well – but most often they are not. I’m in this for the long haul and I’m concerned with making things better long term’”.

We shall return to the topic of school meals in greater depth later.

John Carvel in Child obesity has doubled in a decade (The Guardian, 22^nd April 2006) reiterated the problem: “More than a quarter of children in English secondary schools are clinically obese, almost double the proportion a decade ago, and an official survey released yesterday also showed that girls were suffering more than boys from a crisp and chocolate-fuelled life of too much eating and too little exercise.

Colin Waine, chairman of the National Obesity Forum, said that the figures showed a ‘public health timebomb [sic]’ in the making: children who were obese in their early teens were twice as likely to die by age 50, he said.

Researchers measured the height and weight of 11-15 year olds, and found 26.7% of girls and 24.2% of boys qualified as obese – nearly double the rate in 1995. Among children aged 2-10, 12.8% of girls and 15.9% of boys weighed above the obesity threshold – also well up on 10 years before.

The figures, based on 2,000 children, come from the National Health Survey for 2004, and have alarmed doctors as well as casting doubt on the ability to achieve its target to halt the rise in childhood obesity.

Amanda Eden, care adviser at Diabetes UK, said: ‘We will soon be seeing our children growing up losing limbs and becoming blind, as they develop the serious complications of having the condition. A firmer line needs to be taken to force the food industry to adhere to food labelling guidelines, so people know what’s in the food they buy.

‘They also need to ban junk food advertising to kids, and find more ways of encouraging people to exercise’.

The increase in obesity accelerated sharply in 2004, especially among girls, the survey said. Figures for the 11-15 age group showed the proportion of obese girls grew from 15.4% in 1995 to 22.1% in 2003. But in 2004 it shot up to 26.7%.

Over the same period, the proportion of girls who were overweight, but not enough to qualify as obese, increased from 12.6% to 14.8%. In 2004 a total of 46% of girls and 30.5% of boys were either overweight or obese”.

As for guzzling crisps and chocolate, children are merely reproducing adult eating patterns. There is a convergence between the generations rather than a gap, as children mimic their harassed elders. According to Joanna Blythman’s Bad Food Britain (London, Fourth Estate, 2006): “More than any other nationality, bar Americans, the British people eat – or to be more accurate, snack – on the hoof, as a matter of course. There is an abundance of ‘street food’ in Britain, but not of the gastronomic, life-enhancing sort. Kids gulp down cans of pop and sweets on the way to and from school. City suits bolt out from offices to grab a hasty sarnie and crisps, devouring them as they rush back to close that last deal. Lethargic shoppers amble round shopping malls with a giant cookie in one hand and a can of diet cola in the other” (pp234-5).

And: “On the savoury front, by 2002 the United Kingdom was gobbling up 51 per cent of the European ‘savoury snacks’ market (crisps and their variants, salted crackers and nuts), three times more than the nearest contender, Germany. Whereas 86 per cent of Britons eat such snacks, less than half of Italians do” (Blythman, op. cit., p236). The pressures of a heavy academic curriculum mirror the pressures of the office with lunch breaks severely curtailed to squeeze in more and more work. The high street has changed beyond recognition, bristling with rival chains selling every conceivable variation on the theme of coffee (in my youth, Oliver’s the bakers and the Lite Bite were the only options beyond the supermarket cafeteria to take a break in the middle of the trudge around town, the latter a greasy spoon where my Mother would treat me to an iced finger bun and a cup of tea) purveying luxury sandwiches and perpetually moist slivers of cake. Demand means that they can happily squat cheek by jowl without serious risk of driving each other out of business. Given commuting distances and the awareness of the precariousness of our employment is (another favourite scare story in the media) it is absurd to castigate the individual for not returning home and slaving over a hot stove at midday. A more appropriate target for disapproval would be the system that wrings out every last drop of energy and commitment for precious little recompense.

Blythman is quite correct in identifying crisps as our national weakness and I cannot resist indulging in an aside by quoting Miles Kington’s spoof news story in a recent edition of The Independent (6^th July 2006), which beautifully satirises how marketing ploys latch on to snobbery and malaise: “Just when we thought nobody would ever come up with a new flavour for potato crisps, Mr Jason Toobody of Leicester has taken the game to a whole new level. He and his company, Gastrocrisps, have produced a three-course dinner flavoured set of crisps!

‘Obviously you don’t get all three flavours in one crisp,’ says Jason. ‘That would be disgusting. But in the three-course dinner bag you get starter-flavoured crisps at the top, maybe prawn cocktail or gazpacho, then halfway down you get salmon or venison flavoured crisps, and to finish off, apple or mango crisps’.

The idea is that to achieve a complete meal sensation, you eat right through one packet. Mr Toobody reckons that there are fewer calories in these packets of crisps than in a genuine three-course dinner, so he could actually sell it as a slimming device”.

Faced with such evidence (no matter how vaguely formulated – again, Carvel’s article leaves us in the dark about the representativeness of the sample), the Government felt goaded into deflecting the criticisms it could expect from parents: “Caroline Flint, the public health minister, said yesterday: ‘We have taken huge steps forward and are starting to change attitudes through the Five A Day campaign [which urges all consumers, young and old alike, to much five portions of fresh fruit and vegetables a day], the school fruit scheme, and more investment in school food and sport’.

However, she added that the government recognised that it needed to do more to meet the target.

Prof Waine said that the latest obesity figures were disturbing (…)

‘It really augurs very badly for the future health of the population as these children move from adolescence to adulthood. We are in danger of raising a generation of people who have a shorter life expectancy than their parents’.

He said that increased activity among children, such as not walking or cycling to school, coupled with more ‘energy dense foods’ was fuelling the crisis. ‘Being obese at adolescence increases the cancer risk by 21% for girls and 14% for boys.

‘In my youth, playing cricket and tennis were the norm. These have now been replaced by watching television and playing video games’.

The survey also found that the obesity rate among adults had risen to 24%, in spite of people exercising more and eating more fruit and vegetables.

The proportion of men eating at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day increased from 22% in 2001 to 24% in 2004, while the figure for women went up from 25% to 27%”.

Interestingly, Professor Waine’s comments about cricket and tennis betray his class origins: on the estate where I grew up, running around the decaying garages playing hide and seek, playing on the rusty swings (when they were not out of reach because the local spoilsports had gone to the trouble of winding the chain round the top bar) and cycling. Tennis courts would never have been incorporated into the layout of a working class area (and I did not inhabit the roughest part of town). Football was the preferred knockabout for boys (cricket not attracting many devotees in Scotland, representing the quintessentially English sport).

Jenny Hope picked up on the theme (Daily Mail, 22^nd April 2006) in Childhood obesity doubles in a decade: “The explosion in childhood obesity is continuing among all age groups, which means they face a lifetime of health problems.

One in four children aged 11-15 is now obese – so fat they are threatening their health – with almost half of girls officially classified as obese or overweight.

Experts last night said if trends continue, half of all children could be not only overweight but obese by 2020. More of them will develop Type 2 diabetes, which used to be found only in middle-aged adults.

Junk food, sedentary lifestyles and the ‘electronic babysitter’ of TV and computer screens are blamed for creating couch potato children who are piling on the pounds”.

Once again, it would never occur to Hope that junk food may be the only sustenance available in a radius of several miles, sedentary lifestyles are the rule as opposed to the exception and the scandalous under-provision of child care facilities at decent rates leaves the television as the sole recourse for the many, au pairs and nannies reserved for the middle classes. Again, Hope trots out the received wisdom unimaginatively.

Marcia Millman perfectly captures the prevalent attitude towards child obesity: “To parents a fat child is an embarrassment, being viewed by society as a poor reflection on the parents themselves. If obesity is an expression of something gone wrong with the child, there must be something wrong with the parents as well, and the way they treated the child. Until adolescence, children are not regarded as responsible, so fat children are pitied and their parents blamed” (op. cit., p75).

A poignant illustration of Millman’s argument is to be found in the case study by journalist Tessa Cunningham, How could I do this to my boys? (Daily Mail 14th June 2006): "Community nurse Jayne Philips loved her boys so much she spoilt them with home cooking and never saw the devastation she was causing. At 13 Mitchel weighed a staggering 30st while David, 15, had a dangerous heart condition. But if that’s extraordinary enough, what happened next is even more remarkable. In just two years Mitchel has shed 14st and David 5 stone".

The implication of the opening paragraph is that David’s heart condition directly resulted from overeating, whereas it resulted from a congenital defect as reading further clarifies. Home cooking is evidently not the panacea proponents of the anti-feminist “back to the kitchen” movement are wont to paint it as.

Mrs Philips’ story proceeds with the kind of anecdote that could be drawn from a thousand fat people’s lives: "Smoothing out my son Mitchel’s shirt at the launderette I caught the eye of an elderly lady. ‘What a pretty duvet cover,’ she gushed. ‘Did you buy it locally?’

Hastily I pointed out her mistake. ‘This isn’t a duvet. It’s my 13-year-old son’s new shirt,’ I laughed. Her jaw nearly hit the floor.

But although at 30st and 3ft 6in, wide Mitchel was almost 20st overweight, I didn’t feel a shred of embarrassment. Why should I? In my eyes he wasn’t obese at all.

They say love is blind. Well, it definitely was in my case. I didn’t just adore Mitchel and his older brother, David. I loved them virtually to death – by overfeeding them.

It took a terrible wake-up call in June 2004 for me to see the truth. Now at last David and Mitchel really are the handsome boys I always knew they were, but it’s taken 24 months of diet, exercise and iron willpower. In that time Mitchel, now 15, has had to shed 14st and David, now 17, has lost five stone. And they’re still not finished.

I’m not stupid. As a community staff nurse, I have a degree in nursing. So does my husband, Mark. But we never saw our children as obese. We thought they were just big-boned. Accepting the terrible damage I inflicted on my sons has been devastating.

It all started when David was born in September 1988. Mark, a senior staff nurse, and I were ecstatic. Weighing 10lbs, David seemed a healthy baby but within days doctors found he was born with a serious heart defect.

He had been born without a left ventricle which meant he suffered from breathlessness, fluid in his lungs and a lack of energy.

At two he had major surgery (…)

I was consumed with guilt because David was so ill. He had to have five operations and it was a year before we were finally reunited at home.

With my family around me at last, I vowed to be the perfect mum – apron on, sleeves rolled up and producing a conveyor belt of delicious cakes to spoil them with.

I was brought up to equate love with food. I’m an only child and my mother spoilt me rotten. Our table groaned with home-baked pies and cakes. Not surprisingly I’ve always been plump. By the age of 11, I weighed 12st and I was a size 16 when I married Mark.

As David had been so sick, by the time he came out of hospital at the age of three he was only the size of a small two-year-old and very frail.

I was desperate for him to gain weight and tempted him with fattening goodies. The more he ate, the better mother I believed myself to be. Watching the boys clean their plates, I should have felt disgusted. Instead, I felt proud.

I was such a hypocrite that I looked down on mothers who let their children gorge on junk food. I kidded myself that because we sat at the table for a proper meal three times a day we were different from families who gorged on TV dinners.

Yet I now see that our diet was just as unhealthy. Breakfast was a fry-up of sausages, eggs, baked beans, bacon and fried bread. For tea it was a Victoria sponge or plate of fairy cakes. Dinner was a roast followed by treacle sponge, jam tart or lemon meringue pie.

As the boys’ appetites grew, normal dinner plates became too small so I bought 15in platters designed to hold a turkey with all the trimmings.

Every day I staggered home from the supermarket with six bags of shopping and thought it normal. Our weakness was doughnuts. The boys ate 12 a day. We got through 50lbs of potatoes every week and three loaves of bread a day. My weekly food bill came to £300. Now it’s barely £100.

By the age of two Mitchel was wearing clothes intended for a seven-year-old. I couldn’t find shoes wide enough to fit him. In desperation, I took him to Worcester Royal Infirmary and had some specially made. They were an adult size four and 4H width.

I should have realised something was terribly wrong. But, although my self-delusion seems extraordinary, even professionals didn’t tell me that his size was due to his diet. Instead doctors told me Mitchel had suffered an early growth spurt which would rectify itself by the time he was 18.

Convinced that he was simply large for his age, I even took Mitchel on Vanessa Feltz’s TV talk show to discuss my problems. He was dubbed Britain’s heaviest four-year-old. No wonder – he weighed 8st.

By the time he was nine, Mitchel’s waist measured 56in and I had to get his school trousers and blazer specially made.

He was so fat that he had huge drooping breasts and his eyes were little slits but, blinded by love, Mark and I thought he was beautiful. I told him so all the time and he believed me.

When classmates nicknamed him The Jolly Giant, he laughed along. So did I. But it hurt when he was banned from playing rugby with the other boys. The other mothers complained that, if he fell on their children, he’d kill them. I thought they were being neurotic. Now I quite understand.

Meanwhile, David’s weight was putting such a strain on his heart that he would become breathless just by walking to the front door.

From the age of 12 – when he weighed around 13st – he had to be taught at home because he was too weak to go to school. Now I know that his weight compounded his problem. But, unbelievable as it sounds, I never saw it.

Friends and relatives dropped hints but they were scared of offending me (…)

My mother gently suggested that I should put Mitchel on a diet, but I told her not to be so cruel. Mark’s mother was much blunter. She banned Mitchel from sitting on her furniture in case he broke it. I was so incensed I refused to visit again.

When we walked down the street, strangers pointed: ‘Look at that fat kid’. But I didn’t feel embarrassed, in fact we enjoyed all the attention.

On holiday in Tenerife aged 11, Mitchel was sunbathing bare-chested in his outsized Bermuda shorts when we found ourselves surrounded by a coachload of Japanese tourists. We laughed when they all begged to take his picture. ‘He’s a mini Sumo wrestler,’ they said.

By the time he was 13, I was having to buy all his clothes from specialist stores catering for overweight adults. Although they weren’t trendy, he never complained. Children see themselves through their parents’ eyes. We were so convinced he was gorgeous, he believed us".

What an indictment that our culture cannot conceive of fat being worthy of affection to the extent that where a mother does “forgive” her sons for deviating from the norm she has to be induced to mend her ways. If (and this conditional is quite deliberate) overweight impinges on health to the extent that it prevents the proper functioning of the body and shortens life expectancy then it should be addressed: I am not advocating defiance to the point of suicide. However, in a context where tut-tutting, censure and exclusion are the automatic penalties of even a few pounds above the bones-protruding-through-the-skin emaciated the social pain inflicted is reprehensible. Our minds are colonised by the diet industry and ideals of beauty that favour the pre-pubescent look (any hint of maturity eschewed as a reminder of the ineluctable decay that follows). The Philips saga, atypical and extreme though it may be, is set before the reader as emblematic, our fears writ large. This distortion serves to reinforce the message that we are right to connect fat to morbidity and right to keep on spending on slimming magazines and meal substitutes. Fat equals misery and we are never allowed to forget it.

Mrs Philips’ cautionary tale is framed in terms of the familiar narrative of deception, seeing the light and ultimate salvation moves on to the crucial phase where a redeemer appears: "When the boys’ friends visited for tea, they gawped in amazement at the food we ate and turned down second helpings. I just thought they weren’t being fed enough at home.

We lived for food and never saw that it was killing us. Other families swim or go on cycle rides together. We played Ready Steady Cook.

When I met Mark he’d been super fit – playing football for Worcester City and running ten miles a day – but he too got sucked into over-eating. Soon he was edging 20st.

By the time he was 15, David, who was once so scrawny, was catching up with Mitchel. His weight nosed towards 17st and he needed a wheelchair to get around town.

And Mitchel, at 13, was so exhausted he’d come home from school and collapse in front of the TV with barely enough energy to come to the table for dinner.

Then came the day when our washing machine broke and the elderly lady commented on my attractive bed linen when I took out Mitchel’s new lilac check shirt (size 70in chest) at the launderette.

I laughed. But, as I waited for the wash to finish, I picked up a magazine. Inside was an advert from a TV company looking for families with large children. The word ‘fat’ wasn’t mentioned. Intrigued, I sent off the boys’ details and was thrilled when we were picked.

But then the scales fell from my eyes. On the first day of filming in June 2004 we were weighed. Mitchel tipped the scales at 29st 11lbs. David weighed 17st and I wasn’t far behind at 16st 7lbs. Mark, meanwhile, was 23st.

We hadn’t weighed ourselves in years. I was so horrified, I wanted to quit. But then we were introduced to the programme’s lifestyle coach, Pete Cohen. He was furious.

‘Can’t you see you are killing your children?’ he snapped. ‘Carry on like this – and they will be dead in six months’.

I felt I’d been kicked in the stomach. For the first time I saw my children through other people’s eyes. The shock was horrific.

David’s face was blue from struggling for breath. Mitchel looked as though he had been blown up by an air pump. ‘You’re right. They’re gross,’ I whispered. I was sick with shame. Mark was shaking. ‘What have we done?’ he asked.

The next day Pete came to our home to watch me cook. Seeing our lifestyle through his eyes for the first time, I felt appalled.

How could I have believed it was normal for kids to use 15in platters or guzzle 12 doughnuts a day?

Pete’s words had shocked the boys rigid. I can now see that they hated their unhealthy lifestyle. But they didn’t know any different.

Things had to change. Pete told us to follow a controlled low-fat and low-sugar diet. To avoid temptation, I bought only enough food for each day. We swapped fizzy drinks for water, cakes for fresh fruit and low-fat yoghurts, and our 15in platters for side plates.

We weren’t hungry – we had a lifetime’s worth of blubber to live off. Hooked on fizzy drinks and cakes, we were consuming enough sugar every week to fill two 1.5-gallon dustbin bags. It was obscene.

Pete encouraged us to take a 30-minute daily walk and swim. At first Mitchel and David couldn’t walk to the end of the garden without feeling dizzy. But Pete spurred us on, ringing for a daily progress report.

The weight soon fell off. It was the best incentive. Mitchel lost two stone in the first fortnight and David one stone. I’m now 12st.

Dieting has been easier than we ever dared imagine. I’ve never had to nag the boys. In fact, they keep me on the straight and narrow.

My £100 weekly food bill is a third of what it was. We buy the best quality food and savour every mouthful. For breakfast the boys have a slice of toast or a bowl of porridge. Lunch is a salad sandwich.

Their favourite dinner is pasta salad or fresh mussels. We snack on bags of dried fruit instead of chocolate bars and our weekly treat is a slice of cake.

The boys reassure me that, despite their weight, they were happy, but I should have been arrested for what I did to them.

(…) Mitchel looks fantastic. But he still suffers from the legacy of over-eating.

He needs an operation to correct his left leg which bent under the strain of his weight, and the huge flaps of excess skin on his chest, legs and arms will have to be surgically removed.

I cooked all the food and encouraged my sons to eat it. I’ll carry that guilt for life".

Thus a loving mother is persuaded to view herself as little better than a wicked poisoner.

Imputed Causes

Jenny Hope (Daily Mail, 7^th March 2006) was first to probe the likely causes of the “epidemic” (the vocabulary of pathology) in Bottle-feeding baby raises risk of adult obesity: “Bottle-fed babies are more likely to suffer from obesity in later life, say researchers.

Those who drink formula milk rather than breast milk and go on to solid food at an early age could be at risk of weight problems decades later, it is claimed.

Bottle feeding could lead to a pattern of over-eating which is difficult to overcome.

A study published yesterday found that babies drinking formula milk took in more calories and experienced weight gain at a crucial stage in growth.

The Children of the 90s study, based at the University of Bristol, examined the feeding habits of 881 babies at four months and compared them with their weight gain in childhood.

It found the fastest-growing infants were those who had been fed formula milk rather than breast milk, and who were weaned on to solid foods too early – between three to four months.

These children turned out to be heavier than expected by the age of five, putting them at increased risk of obesity as they get older.

Dr Pauline Emmett, the study’s senior nutritionist and a dietician, said: ‘It seems that breast-fed infants are better able to regulate their energy intake than formula-fed infants.

‘It could be because parents feeding formula milk make sure that the baby finishes the bottle and do not necessarily reduce the quantity offered once weaning is established.

‘While there are obvious benefits in avoiding poor growth rates, excessive weight gain during infancy is also a problem as it may lead to an increased risk of being overweight or obese in later life.

‘Other studies have shown that greater dietary intakes during early infancy may have long-term effects on health and obesity’”.

The underlying logic of the press treatment of child obesity comes clearly to the fore: as children are presumed to be less competent than their parents, more susceptible to influence since their critical faculties are not yet sufficiently sharpened to distinguish between truth and falsehood in advertising and certainly not to know any better when it comes to making informed choices (as any fully trained consumer is expected to be in a position to do, yet another myth aimed at letting manufacturers and government off the hook) a less strident tone is adopted towards them. Lashing out at them would be futile when it is all their feckless, ignorant parents’ fault anyway. A certain latitude can be shown, a limited, proviso-studded compassion fat adults are not entitled to hope for.

The “breast is best” campaign has still not succeeded in overcoming the prudery that deters mothers from satisfying their babies’ demand for antibody-fortified natural milk in public: “The UK has one of the lowest breast-feeding rates in Europe, with almost one in three new mothers never attempting to breastfeed compared with two per cent in Sweden.

Younger mothers are the most apologetic, with two in five of those aged under 24 never trying” (financial constraints coupled with lack of protection as a freelance dictated that I return to work ten days after my son was born and although I took a breast pump into the toilets with me during the lunch hour I soon gave up expressing – as far as I can tell in Britain breast feeding is largely the preserve of middle-class women who buy organic and enjoy the privilege of extended maternity leave. I do not dispute the benefits of breast as opposed to bottle, and I would have liked to have had the opportunity to stick to breast myself. In the UK, however, as Blythman maintains (see below), processed food possesses a certain prestige. New mothers want the best for their babies and advertisers are skilled at exalting the nutritional value of formula milk).

Jeremy Laurance followed with Children who get too little sleep more likely to be obese (The Independent, 17^th March 2006), which takes up another factor unrelated to the lapses in willpower explanation that inform the mythology of fat-hatred: “The less children sleep the fatter they become, researchers have found. Hectic personal lifestyles and lax bedtimes for their offspring may be driving the explosion in child obesity.

A study of 442 children aged between five and 10 found one in five of the boys and one in four of the girls was overweight or obese.

On average the children slept for 12 to 13 hours a night. But those who slept for 10.5 to 11.5 hours had a 40 per cent increased risk of becoming overweight or obese. In those who slept for eight to 10 hours a night, the risk was more than threefold.

(…) The researchers from Laval University in Quebec say the recognised risk factors of watching TV for long periods, physical inactivity and parental obesity applied to the children in the study. But the effect of lack of sleep was independent of these.

‘These findings are important because sleep duration is a potentially modifiable risk factor that could be important to consider in the prevention and treatment of obesity,’ they say.

The researchers describe their findings as ‘provocative’ given that the best way of keeping weight down is to increase activity.

‘It is somewhat paradoxical that sleeping may be associated with leanness. Although recommendations to get abetter night’s sleep and more exercise might seem to be at odds with each other from the perspective of energy expenditure and energy balance, these simple goals may become part of our future approach to combating obesity’.

Separate laboratory studies have shown short sleep duration is associated with lower levels of leptin and increased levels of ghrelin – hormones which play a key role in hunger and appetite.

Changes in the two hormones caused by lack of sleep could alter food intake and explain why individuals affected put on weight, the researchers say. The results suggest a ‘dose-response’ relationship between lack of sleep and overweight, with children sleeping the least being at greatest risk of growing fat.

Previous studies have suggested there may be an ‘ideal zone’ of sleep duration and that those who sleep longer or shorter suffer adverse effects on their energy balance. The researches conclude: ‘Reduction in sleeping hours has become a hallmark of our society. If the findings prove to be reproducible and generalisable [sic]…we could add sleep duration to the environmental factors that are prevalent in our society and that contribute to weight gain and obesity’”.

In keeping with the more nuanced approach alluded to earlier, which concedes that there might just be other forces than mere indolence or piggishness at play, Sarah Harris (Daily Mail, 27^th December 2005) highlighted certain structural deficiencies in Quarter of secondary schools are unfit for PE: “A quarter of secondary schools are unable to teach physical education properly because their sports facilities are in such poor condition, according to a report.

It claims problems such as dangerous outdoor surfaces and inadequate changing rooms have ‘severely restricted’ pupils’ ability to take part in games.

The report, by education watchdog Ofsted, says that outdoor activities have ‘diminished in importance’ in secondary schools. And it warns that many primary school pupils are so unfit they cannot cope with exercise and simply stand around in lessons”.

Underinvestment by local and central government must carry the can here: “The report said secondary school sports facilities are often outdated and poorly-maintained. Changing rooms are frequently ‘drab’ and contain communal showers, which the report says are ‘generally unacceptable for secondary pupils’.

Many outdoor surfaces are disintegrating, making them dangerous for children. Some suffer drainage problems which mean they cannot be used in winter”.

Limited resources were unevenly distributed: “Primaries are slightly better equipped, with inadequate facilities a problem for one in ten schools. The report found, however, that swimming and outdoor activities for younger children are generally neglected due to under-funding”.

The overloaded syllabus also conspires against non-academic pursuits: “The reports also said too many primary school pupils are physically inactive for much of the time.

Although youngsters generally understand the need to be active, inspectors are increasingly concerned about their poor stamina and their inability to ‘sustain energetic movement’.

The report, based on inspections between September 2003 and April this year, concluded: ‘In too many schools, the emphasis is simply on taking part in PE rather than developing a body of knowledge and skills associated with health and fitness’. Its findings emerged as the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, which advises the Government, recommended that teachers use technology such as ‘interactive whiteboards’ and video cameras to increase pupils’ interest in physical education.

Critics warned, however, that the use of such technology could lead to children spending even less time outdoors”.

The connection between being constantly stuck behind a desk cramming and weight gain was immediately made: “Doctors have warned of an alarming increase in childhood obesity in recent years. The number of obese children rose between 25 per cent between 1995 and 2002. Dr David Haslam, clinical forum director of the National Obesity Forum, said the problem is ‘genuine and horrific’.

He added: ‘I’m all for more running about outside.

‘Clearly, the message is we need more physical activity, not just in schools but at home. We should do everything to promote and encourage that’”.

The editorial, Sporting chance, was quick to snipe at the Government (although for once I have sympathy for the right-wing mouthpiece’s stance): “Across the nation’s schools the inspectors [from Ofsted] have found dismal facilities (more than 2,500 playing fields sold off under Labour) and a ‘shallow and superficial’ understanding of the benefits of physical education. Meanwhile, too few teachers are willing to coach sports during school hours – let alone after school or at weekends.

Ministers have already been shamed by Jamie Oliver into improving school food.

Where is the Jamie Oliver of the sports world who can shame New Labour into providing worthwhile exercise for our couch-potato schoolchildren?”

James Slack (Daily Mail, 9^th March 2006) in The prisoners with better sports facilities than schoolchildren condemned the skewed priorities that put the welfare of criminals above the blameless young: “Prisoners enjoy better sports facilities than schoolchildren, according to the Government’s spending watchdog.

Inspectors said that, of 16 prisons they visited, 14 rated their sports facilities as good as – or better than – those given to the local community.

One jail, Standford Hill at Sheerness, Kent, had both a pitch-and-putt course and a swimming pool.

All 16 have sports halls and even cardio-vascular equipment suites, while 15 have weight-lifting and two have a climbing wall. All except three have playing fields.

A spokesman for the National Audit Office said they were comparing facilities in the jails with those offered by the local councils, including schools. Some PE instructors explicitly said prisoners enjoyed better equipment than local children.

The facilities are funded from a £60million-a-year physical education budget for the 77,000 prison inmates. Some £29million is spent on gym instructors alone.

Yet facilities were often underused, with just 11 per cent of inmates participating at Bristol prison. The average was 43 per cent.

Critics said the Government should be making children – not convicts – the top priority. An Ofsted report last year said a quarter of secondary schools cannot teach physical education properly because their facilities are in such poor condition.

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: ‘Crime should not be a short cut to a first-class lifestyle – children and local taxpayers should be put first’.

Norman Brennan, director of the Victims of Crime Trust, said: ‘If prisons want a reputation of punishment and rehabilitation I suggest they get rid of the pitch-and-putt and swimming pools and concentrate on basic exercise facilities. This sends out the wrong message’.

But Tory MP Edward Leigh, chairman of the Commons all-party Public Accounts Committee, said: ‘If an inmate leaves prison healthier and fitter than when entering, it may help him or her to readjust to life outside.

‘The Prison Service has invested in high-quality physical education facilities but really needs to ramp up how much they are used and get the most benefit from them’.

A prison Service spokesman said: ‘At one time Standford Hill prison used a small area of land as a golf course. This provided gentle exercise for elderly prisoners who couldn’t participate in more strenuous activity. It was discontinued over six months ago’.

It said only six jails had pools, all at least 20 years old.

The NAO also confirmed that prisoners have more spent on their food than pupils do.

Jails spend £94 million a year on catering, ranging from £1.20 a day to provide three meals at open jails and £3.41 a day at young offenders’ institutions. The average is £1.87. Primary schools spend 40p to 65p and secondary schools 56p to 64p for one meal a day.

Hospitals spend £2.50 for a full day’s meals while the average in the armed forces is £2 to £2.20.

The falling popularity of cooked breakfasts has led many jails to introduce packs comprising cereal, milk and a bread roll. It means porridge, once a staple of prison life, is now off the menu”.

Mr Slack’s article is suffused with righteous indignation that innocents should be neglected whilst the detritus of society are favoured. Rather than strip convicted offenders of their modest consolations, depriving them of hope and diminishing the prospects of eventual rehabilitation (as even the Conservative Edward Leigh admits would be the effect of a fresh punishment) it would be infinitely more preferable to boost the cash available to local authorities and temper the (target-driven) hysteria about exam pass rates to make room for sports again. Of course, this would entail raising revenue through taxation, which is why the punitive agenda is more likely to appeal.

Sarah Harris (Daily Mail, 4^th January 2006) warned that the rot was set to spread in Now Labour pulls the plug on swimming pools: “Labour was accused yesterday of neglecting the nation’s health by allowing scores of public swimming pools to fall into disrepair and close down.

Former Olympic swimming gold medallist Duncan Goodhew hit out as he revealed that at least three pools a month come to his attention as under threat of closure.

Sports Minister Richard Caborn admitted that the problem was on the same scale as the controversy over the sell-off of playing fields which has dogged Tony Blair since he came to power.

With levels of child obesity spiralling, the Government should be pouring investment into leisure and fitness facilities rather than ignoring them, say critics.

Labour came to power pledging to protect playing fields but has allowed thousands of pitches at school and community sites to be concreted over.

Now swimming pools are facing the same fate, as cash-strapped local authorities prioritise other services. Councils regard pools as easy targets in cost-cutting exercises as they have no statutory duty to provide them”.

A New Labour politician through and through, the Sports Minister expressed his aversion to pumping money into public amenities on the off-chance that his poorer constituents might not be able to scrape together the fees for access to private pools: “Mr Caborn did not contest that three pools a month come under threat.

Asked if the problem of disappearing playing fields was developing with swimming pools, he replied: ‘The answer is yes’.

He said it was unacceptable that some pools were subsidising each swimmer to the cost of £5 a head because the facilities were so costly to run.

But he claimed there were now more swimming facilities than there had been for years – except that many were in private membership clubs”.

The editorial in the same edition, Pool resources tore Cabon to shreds (and he deserved it): “It is fatuous of the sports minister Richard Caborn to claim there are more pools available than ever before in private (and pricey) health clubs. What good are they to the average school child?

But then Mr Caborn’s grasp on reality has always seemed slender – he claimed yesterday that the scandalous depletion in playing fields (true, started by the Tories, but with 2,540 concreted over since Labour came to power) has been reversed – an assertion immediately contradicted by the National Playing Fields Association.

Every child should be taught to swim, both for safety and fitness. Fewer and fewer will have the opportunity to do so unless the decline is halted”.

Jackie Ashley’s tone was slightly more conciliatory in Swimming pools should be a policy battleground (The Guardian, 2^nd January 2006): “Swimming is the single most popular sport for girls and the second most popular for boys”.

She gave credit where it was due without denying the acuteness of the problem: “[Sports Minister] Richard Caborn has done his best to reverse such national disgraces as the selling-off of school and community sports fields, yet the picture is still pretty terrible. In 1994, the last time a survey was done, England had nearly 78,000 such pitches. Since then we have lost 34,000. In a crowded, urban and increasingly obese country, that is shameful. The law has been changed to make the sale of school playing fields a bit harder, but the price and shortage of land remain powerful incentives for schools to sell them off.

An even sharper measurement, however, may be swimming. More than 12 million swim regularly. Unlike football, which is hugely commercialised, this sport depends on public subsidy. Swimming pools are expensive to build and maintain and, since the Victorians and Edwardians, have been prime examples of local authority beneficence.

Many, in the centres of the old industrial cities, are now crumbling and squalid. Many are faced with closure (…) England has just 16 50-metre pools open to the public and only two are in London, where, admittedly, there are plans for another six, including at the Olympic centre in Stratford.

There seems to be plenty of private money for expensive fitness clubs for the well-off and single but only public funding can provide the pools used by women and families. Yet swimming is not a statutory responsibility of cash-strapped local authorities (…)

The former sports minister Kate Hoey said recently that ‘all the fine words about tackling obesity and the fitness of the nation proclaimed by politicians are worthless if not translated into resources to keep our swimming pools’. She’s absolutely right; those who don’t swim might like to imagine how they would feel if only local authorities operated football stadiums and, all round the country, they were being closed down”.

Ashley’s parting salvo is devastatingly accurate: “Swimming is important of itself, but it is also a good political symbol. It is a hugely popular but inevitably public-sector activity, which almost everyone can enjoy. If the public good means anything these days, when libraries are being eroded by Google and Amazon, then public swimming pools should be a policy battleground which, if not up there with schools and hospitals, is bobbing below them”. Right across the board, public services are being whittled away for fear of alienating the middle-class voter.

Sarah Harris is even more explicit in drawing attention to the class divide in Private pupils getting twice as much exercise (Daily Mail, 28^th January 2006): “Pupils at private schools are spending at least twice as much time on sport as children in state education, say researchers.

The huge gulf in the amount of time devoted to physical activity has developed despite Government pledges to do more to tackle spiralling levels of childhood obesity.

Critics claim the declining number of playing fields has contributed to the problem of inactive pupils.

Research by the Independent Schools Council shows that its pupils spend at least three hours a week pursuing sporting activities on average. Many spend more than four hours a week.

But only around two-thirds of pupils in the state sector manage two hours of sport each week, according to the latest government figures.

About half of all six-year-olds in state schools are not getting the recommended two hours of PE every week. In the independent sector, pupils of this age spend on average just under three-and-a-half hours a week on sport, according to the ISC.

By the age of 11, pupils in private schools spend more than four-and-a-half hours a week on sport and PE. This is at least twice the amount in the state sector.

Last year, a government-commissioned poll of 11,500 state schools found that only 51 per cent of six-year-olds and 54 per cent of seven-year-olds were spending the recommended time on physical activity.

However, the real picture is likely to be even gloomier since schools in this survey were part of an £820million sports programme and were therefore likely to have better provision”.

Private schools educate a mere seven per cent of the population and, unlike their state-sector counterparts, are amply endowed with funding: “The survey shows that 59 per cent of private schools have swimming pools, almost 79 per cent have artificial grass pitches and 71 per cent have athletic tracks.

However, PE lessons are ‘severely restricted’ in one in four state secondary schools due to crumbling, hazardous facilities and neglected playing fields, according to a report by Ofstead.

PE is compulsory in the national curriculum but it fails to specify how long pupils should spend on it. Playing fields have been disappearing at the rate of almost one a day under Labour”.

She then jumped on the anti-computer games bandwagon in Are we depriving our children of the magic of play? (Daily Mail, 30th May 2006): "Children are being stripped of their natural creativity by structured activities and high-tech toys, leading academics warned yesterday.

Innate play skills are lost as parents pay for them to attend classes and clubs or buy televisions and video game machines for their bedrooms.

Even at school they are told what games to play in sports lessons and sometimes even in the playground.

But the regimentation of their leisure time is stifling their initiative, says a report.

Entitled The Trouble With 21st Century Kids, it was compiled by Peter Smith, professor of psychology at Goldsmith’s College, University of London, and nutritionist Rachel Biggins. It says: ‘Some structuring of play can be helpful now and then to get children going or help children who have difficulty playing. But this should not go too far.

‘Regimented play activities can have negative consequences on the social and emotional development of a child because they are too organised and take away a child’s initiative and freedom of choice.

‘In contrast, freeform play encourages the creative and multi-sensory development of a child because it has no structure’.

It adds: ‘Play or games with rules, where it is the outcome that motivates the participation, train a child’s thought patterns, leaving less time for their imagination or creative thought process to establish itself and mature’.

The report warns of the stifling potential of television and videos.

‘Although it can be said that there are some positive effects to these activities, such as hand-eye coordination, there is growing concern that children are spending too much time on sedentary, solitary pursuits that can inhibit their mental and physical well-being,’ it says.

‘Experts agree that pre-programmed electronic toys monopolise the brain, because children respond to a scenario constructed by someone else and this is having an impact on their creativity’.

Parents need to encourage more physical activity among their children, it says.

‘We need to begin encouraging children to go out and play, rather than sitting glued to the TV.

‘Parents can help by removing their child from these distractions so they almost have no choice but to go and physically play’.

The report – compiled for SPI Play, which designs and produces indoor play systems – also suggests that parents remove televisions and gaming consoles from their children’s bedrooms.

‘If you enforce this rule when they are young, they won’t miss what they never had,’ it says.

‘Without a TV set monopolising their free time they’ll seek alternatives such as reading and playing games’. Previous research has found that mothers and fathers are inadvertently crushing their children’s imagination by arranging structured things for them to do every second of the day".

My Mother seldom chivvied me about “fresh air” as the chute and roundabout in the nearby park where we congregated after school constituted sufficient enticement. I would roam the expanses of green, following the white lines delineating the boundaries of the pitch or clamber down the bankings to the mysterious weed-choked pathways behind the gardens. The empty classrooms and assembly points fascinated me as I wandered round the grounds (until the new janitor started patrolling with his Alsatians on the hunt for graffiti artists and other sundry vandals). The rotting log, stripped of bark, its smooth surface dotted with wormholes became my spaceship, the huge rusting roller for flattening the grass prior to matches my carriage pulled by four invisible dapple greys. Those carefree, unsupervised days are consigned to memory. Today’s parents are unlikely to have more than the most superficial acquaintance with the occupant(s) of the house or flat next door and keep a watchful eye on their children’s every move lest a moment’s lapse in vigilance end in tragedy.

Jonathan Oliver, in Child obesity aide married to Minister lands £130,000 job…lobbying for Walker’s Crisps (The Mail on Sunday, 22^nd January 2006), intimated the depth of the average politician’s commitment to principle: “The wife of a Cabinet Minister was at the centre of a new cronyism row last night after she took a job with a six-figure salary lobbying for the crisp and fizzy drinks industry.

Heather Rogers, who until last year was a senior civil servant at the forefront of the Government’s battle against child obesity, is to advise the companies which make Pepsi, Pringles and Walker’s Crisps.

She is married to high-flying Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton”.

She is “to become director of the American-owned lobby firm Edelman on a package estimated to be worth more than £130,000.

Her appointment comes at a time of unprecedented public concern about children’s diets and the power of multinational food companies.

Ministers are considering banning the sale of junk food in schools, using cigarette-style health warnings for products with high salt and fat and banning advertising which targets children. The moves follow the crusade for healthier school meals by TV chef Jamie Oliver”.

The lure of the pay packet silences every qualm: “One of Edelman’s most important clients is the Snack, Nut and Crisp Manufacturer’s Association.

The industry body’s website says it ‘aims to create a more positive environment for the growth of the savoury snacks category. This relates primarily to the issues around health and diet and trying to change the perceived ‘bad for you’ image that savoury snacks have’.

Edelman also advises the soft drink giant Pepsico, which owns Walkers and Doritos, and Procter and Gamble, whose brands include Pringles crisps”.

Felicity Lawrence and John Carvel demonstrated that convictions can also waver once the initial fuss has died down (the government on this occasion counting on its estimation of our fickleness) in Free fruit and veg scheme for young pupils hits problems (The Guardian, 28^th January 2006): “The government’s programme to promote fruit and vegetables in schools has been hit by a freeze on health spending and by an official evaluation that suggests it has made little significant impact on children’s consumption.

Staff managing the five-a-day healthy eating promotion and school fruit and vegetable schemes – Labour’s most important public health scheme to date – have been left in limbo since the Department of Health imposed a moratorium on all new programme expenditure last autumn. Most of the staff are on contracts that expire in March and with no certainty about future funding, many have left for other jobs. Reports suggest half of the five-a-day coordinators in London have moved on, and school coordinators around the country are also looking for other work.

The national school fruit and vegetable scheme provides a free piece of fruit or vegetable every day to nearly 2 million children between the ages of four and six in more than 16,000 schools. It forms part of the government’s strategy to tackle obesity, heart disease and cancer by changing people’s diets. The total cost of the school fruit and vegetable scheme in 2004-5 was £29m, and is expected to be £37m in 2006-7”.

I support the idea of making fresh fruit and vegetables available to children and persistence might have paid dividends (although let me repeat that we tubbies do not banish such items from our plates). The cut off age seems arbitrary and illogical if a real taste for them is to be acquired (my disingenuousness is intentional – the scheme was probably little more than a PR stunt to assuage the wrath of parents fired up by Jamie Oliver and extending it to encompass a child’s entire school career was always going to cost too astronomical a sum to attract many adherents). Sadly, it has foundered: “The fruit and vegetable scheme is highly popular with parents and schools but an official evaluation has found it has had no lasting effect on children’s consumption of healthy food. Children eligible for the free fruit or vegetables increased their overall consumption by an average of only one third of a portion a day, failing to reach the government’s five-a-day target. Experts say they warned the government that without funding for educational programmes to support the scheme it was unlikely to achieve much.

The Department of Health said: ‘Children participating in the scheme ate more fruit and vegetables than those not in the scheme, plus there was a raised awareness and knowledge of the five-a-day message. We know more work needs to be done to continue raising awareness of the importance of healthy eating but changing behaviour can take time’”.

Simon Bowers, in Jamie effect finishes school meal firm (The Guardian, 5^th January 2006), celebrated the demise of a company that had achieved notoriety for the poor quality of the products it supplied: “Canterbury Foods, maker of processed goods for school canteens and fast food caterers, has been broken up by administrators after its directors failed to persuade its bank they could recover declining sales – in part blamed on Jamie Oliver’s campaign for healthier school dinners.

The company, which makes cheap burgers, sausage rolls and other pastries, had been in the midst of a radical review which had seen the workforce more than halved to 270 employees. A factory in Hackney, east London, had been shut and the firm’s meat products business was sold last month for £4.5m”.

Anushka Asthana’s excellent So Jamie, how would you like to peel fresh carrots for 700 children? (The Observer, 12^th February 2006) shed light on the appalling conditions endured by the dinner ladies at the sharp end of reform: “Cathy Stewart has had enough. It may be all very well for Jamie Oliver – millionaire, super-cook and television personality – to talk to the nation’s parents and school children on the importance of good food, but Stewart and thousands of her dinner lady colleagues are the ones who have to spend the extra hours cooking it.

‘Have you any idea how long it takes to peel fresh carrots for 700 children?’ she said ‘Or cook meat pies to feed 300 or bake seven cakes? Our workload has soared’.

Stewart is leading a revolt of dinner ladies in Hackney, east London, which is likely to be joined by similar protests in Cheshire and Nottinghamshire. They say they want more money and better resources or they will strike – and the grilled peppers will have to cook themselves.

In Hackney, dinner ladies in 27 schools are deciding whether to stage a walk-out. They say they are happy to spend extra hours chopping organic courgettes, baking cakes from scratch and providing home-cooked roasts. But they are angry because their work is going unrewarded. Some of the kitchen assistants in the borough earn as little as £9,000 a year”.

A female-dominated profession is once again at the bottom of the wages pecking order, starved of status and respect: “Stewart said pressure from parents, children and head teachers had mounted since Oliver appeared on television demanding a school meals revolution. His TV show was a huge hit and forced the government to agree to new standards in school catering. Although the dinner ladies have no problem with Oliver, they are saying they need more support to give children and parents what they want.

‘The dinner ladies are under tremendous pressure…to deliver top notch nosh but at rock bottom pay,’ Stewart said. ‘We agree with Jamie that we should cook fresh food, but we also agree with Jamie that we need more money to do it’. Stewart, who is the Trade and General Workers’ Union representative for the area, said the problem was worse where schools used outside catering contractors. ‘The government say they are putting more money in but we are not seeing it in facilities or wages. All we want is fair pay. I would like to say to Ruth Kelly, come and spend a full day in a school kitchen in Hackney and see how hard this job really is’.

But Kelly’s team say they are pumping money into school meals. A spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills said: ‘We are investing £220 million specifically to help schools and local education authorities transform school meals through training and increased hours for cooks, equipment and a minimum spent on ingredients’. If that money is not reaching the dinner ladies it is not the government’s fault, they say.

The Learning Trust, which runs Hackney’s schools, also pointed the finger elsewhere: ‘We are sympathetic to the needs of catering staff and last year recommended to their employers, the schools, that their jobs be reappraised and salaries increased accordingly,’ said a spokesman.

Whoever is to blame, the result is not good enough for the women in the kitchens. Another catering manager in the borough, who asked not to be named, said she felt her team were being ‘used like donkeys’. ‘We have gone from using packet ingredients to cooking things fresh with the same number of staff and hours – it’s exhausting’”.

I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiments articulated by Ms Lewis: “Some blame exploitation based on workplace sexism. ‘It’s a mum’s army,’ said Christine Lewis, the lead on school meals for the public sector union Unison. ‘It is women working part-time’”.

Caroline Stacey, in Ladies who do lunch (The Independent, 14^th December 2005), set out to ascertain whether Oliver’s programme had made any lasting impact: “Less than a year ago, the messianic moptop [Jamie Oliver] whipped the nation into a froth of outrage about the state of school meals, then topped it off with a gospel of hope, leaving parents, teachers and dinner ladies, even the Government, determined to feed their children better”.

She attended a training kitchen course at Ashlyns Organics, which was established in July 2005 and is run by Jeanette Orrey, described by the journalist as “the nation’s best known dinner lady” and Simon Owen “the chef who worked behind the scenes as the cameras followed the less retiring Jamie’s progress with the meals at Greenwich”: “Their aim is to supply organic vegetables direct to schools and to train or retrain dinner ladies to cook fresh, wholesome food, as much as possible bought locally, and where affordable, grown organically.

Nobody bothered training dinner ladies before. Jeanette Orrey has been in their shoes (steel-toed for safety) for 15 years and can sympathise at the same time as setting an example. She doesn’t call this training; it’s ‘enhancing existing skills’. They’ve already got skills, she points out, but ‘we’re not chefs. We’re cooks. We don’t do fancy meals. We use what we’ve got’.

Most of today’s ladies began washing up for a few hours a day and worked their way up to cooks. They turn out meals for hundreds of children on a tiny budget, dish them all out in under an hour, then wash everything up by hand before leaving the floor clean.

‘What are we called now?’ Liz Kavanagh of Ingrebourne Primary School in Romford, asks fellow cook Jackie Hancock. ‘Catering supervisors, isn’t it?’ But as far as they’re concerned they’re still dinner ladies. ‘It’s a term of endearment,’ Jeanette insists.

Cooks work in a dangerous place, with hot fat, slippery floors and heavy pans, and they’re feeding a vulnerable group. The health and safety checklists are mind-boggling, the potential for disaster terrifying.

Wooden spoons harbour germs, so metal scrapes tooth-jarringly on aluminium, as women – some near retirement age – clatter giant pans that braggardly male chefs think only they can lift. Amid the steam and noise of a school kitchen, the procedures for making sure there is no risk of endangering the children are, to the uninitiated, endless.

Today’s nutritious home-made chicken nuggets must be probed to check they have reached a high enough temperature. The length of time food is kept hot for and at what temperature has to be monitored and recorded. The probes themselves have to be checked and so must the temperature of the fridges and freezers.

That’s before they’ve thought about what to cook, their menu cycles, and their costs. Next year even stricter nutritional guidelines come in. But if cooks can’t persuade children to eat healthier food, they lose their custom and could go out of business”.

The “do more with less” bean counter mentality has done little to improve the dinner ladies’ motivation, although they battle on admirably: “‘I always hated barbecue rib day; opening those boxes and that yellow goo and the smell…’ recalls Liz Kavanagh, casting her mind back to the time before the healthier cooking regime at her school. Now she’s cooking more fresh food, hardly ever fries anything and prefers it that way. Except that it all takes longer and her hours have been cut. ‘When we first started doing healthy food, I thought ‘why us?’ because I didn’t want more work. But now I want to eat what we cook whereas before I wouldn’t have dreamed of eating it’.

Val Jones, head teacher of Tanysdell Primary School, has seen the difference it makes to the children to be offered a choice of hot meal, a vegetarian alternative, jacket potato or filled baguette and salad, prepared by Sue Alsford and the kitchen team.

The children choose each day’s lunch in the morning so they can’t complain it’s not what they like. Sue’s kitchen supplies two other schools, too, clocking up 1,100 lunches a week. Before Essex council washed its hands of the dinners, only 30 children at Tanysdell ate lunch, and now more than 100 look forward to Sue’s meals.

‘The children go out to play after lunch with full tummies, and behave better in the afternoon,’ Val observes. Many children didn’t know what cucumber was, but now they’ll try melon if Sue offers it for pudding”.

Is it really too much to ask for the beleaguered hair-netted heroines of the kitchen to be paid above subsistence level? Even if the obvious immorality of virtual slave labour leaves the authorities cold, they surely they would be willing to listen when they realise that any increase in job satisfaction will have a knock-on effect on children’s well-being and win the approval of parents (who vote for or against them).

Laura Clark, in Schools attacked over ‘fast food’ dining halls (Daily Mail, 14^th March 2006), catalogues related criticisms: “Children are eating rushed, unhealthy lunches in school dining halls which resemble ‘fast food’ outlets, a damning report reveals today.

Ofsted inspectors accuse schools of failing to do enough to steer a generation of couch potatoes towards nutritious diets.

In the first report of its kind, they also blame parents for ‘undermining’ any progress made with students, by failing to provide healthy meals in the home. The study of schools across three local education authorities shows the majority are not improving meals service between inspections”.

Ofsted, anxious to cover its back, is eager to remind parents of their less than perfect track record. What the inspectors overlook is that all children regardless of class membership should enjoy an equal right to proper nutrition (exactly what we do not witness in practice outside the school boundaries). When parents place their daughters and sons in the hands of the state they do so with the legitimate expectation that they will be looked after, that their well-being will be taken account of – the psychology includes the assumption that the strangers (representatives of the education system) to whom they entrust their loved ones will take care of the latter to the best of their ability. This must surely extend to what they are fed. Moreover, it is a far less fraught matter to enforce a fresh food policy in the controlled setting of the school, cut off from the outside influences that parents find extremely hard to resist. Waxing sanctimonious about ignorant slobbish parents does not exempt the authorities from their duty to make the very best meals available.

Clark then mentions one aspect that was to become a major object of contention: “They [schools] are also not ready to banish junk food and fizzy drinks from vending machines on site. Most secondaries are still offering high-fat options in the food dispensers.

And few schools have consulted parents on the food policies they are meant to have in place by the start of the next academic year”.

Ofsted’s list of complaints went on: “Classes in food technology, formerly home economics, are too often dominated by ‘boring’ theory, with pupils spending little time learning to cook, according to the report.

When they do get to try cookery, exercises are often limited to baking cakes, buns and pizzas because the ingredients are cheap.

This undermines schools’ broader efforts to promote healthy eating, inspectors said.

Some schools, particularly primaries, have no on-site kitchen facilities which means cooked meals can be ‘lukewarm’ when served and appear ‘less than appetising’.

Meanwhile the quality of dining accommodation in secondary schools is ‘variable’ and sometimes ‘poor’.

‘A minority of schools had such short lunch breaks that pupils and staff had too little time to eat their food in pleasant surroundings,’ the report said.

‘As a result, they lost the social benefits of eating together.

In extreme cases, pupils bought their meals from the dining area, but had to eat them, including some hot meals, elsewhere.

‘Speedy service in very short lunch breaks gave cooks and supervisors too little time to influence students’ choices’.

The report continued: ‘For a variety of reasons, including a lack of seating space, school meals were provided under conditions similar to commercial ‘fast food’ outlets, with insufficient adult supervision.

‘As a result, students did not always have the chance to develop their social and personal skills further or to make healthier eating choices’.

But the Ofsted report says parents must also take greater responsibility for their offspring’s dietary choices.

Too often they ‘undermine’ lessons in nutrition.

Inspectors highlighted the case of a 14-year-old girl who feared her father would consider a healthy stir-fry meal she had cooked at school ‘rubbish’ that should be ‘given to the dog’.

The report said: ‘We must recognise that no matter what a school offers through breakfast clubs, snacks and lunches, the significant majority of children’s food intake comes from home.

‘Parents have the foremost responsibility to monitor their children’s diet and weight and influence their eating habits and lifestyles’.

Only one in five parents polled by the watchdog believe the school meals service nationally is good quality.

Many wanted to see schools use fresher produce to enable them to offer healthier options”.

The significance of the absence of kitchens in many schools is twofold: first, it indicates that the meals served in those establishments have to be delivered in vans from a sprawling central food “factory”, hardly a reassuring thought, and, second that any serious attempt to ameliorate the situation will have to face up to the legacy of two and a half decades of underfunding inspired by the need to keep council tax payers sweet. Having enumerated a series of woes for which parents bear only an oblique share of the responsibility, Ofsted, by singling out the one extreme instance of unreconstructed parental prejudice – shock, horror, see the kind of attitude we have to contend with! – to render the overall impression less damning.

Simon Bowers, in The Jamie Oliver effect: school dinner firms feel the cost of parental backlash (The Guardian, 17^th May 2006), reminds us both that overcoming our sense of helplessness is worthwhile, that our wrath can still make governments squirm and that the much-maligned goggle box, main conduit of information in our society, has positive uses after all: “The catering company that brought the infamous Turkey Twizzler into Britain’s school kitchens yesterday admitted that Jamie Oliver’s campaign against sub-standard school dinners had taken a healthy bite out of its earnings, wiping £10m off sales in six months.

The celebrity chef’s Channel 4 television series School Dinners has shaken the contract catering industry to the core, leaving steadily retreating revenues and a number of multimillion pound contracts that have failed to attract bidders – despite the promise of more money from the government.

The Turkey Twizzler firm Scolarest said its earnings had plunged in recent months after its parent company Compass, the world’s largest caterer, launched a clampdown on low-margin contracts, many in British schools. The company refused to say how many school dinner contracts it had left entirely, but said earnings had also been hit by parents choosing to make their children packed lunches.

The government last year responded to Oliver’s call for improved standards, pledging to invest £220m over three years to help schools and local education authorities hire better-trained cooks and elevate school meal standards. It has recommended a minimum of 50p be spent on ingredients for primary school meals and 60p for dinners at secondary schools.

The Department for Education is to introduce a range of food standard improvements from the start of the next school year in September, though caterers will be given two years’ grace at primary schools, and three years’ at secondary schools, before these measures become compulsory.

Recent contract negotiations between caterers and local education authorities have been mired in squabbling and uncertainty over how the extra money is to be spent. In some cases, once hotly contested tenders are being shunned”.

Accountability is a marvellous thing – now we have to ensure that the Government is not just making an empty promise it has no intention of keeping in the hope of appeasing us until our interest wanes, otherwise the caterers will revert to business as usual. They too have to operate within constraints and the Turkey Twizzler scandal constitutes a prime example of how a culture of awarding contracts to the lowest bidder is a false economy.

The catering firms cast as the villains of the piece were eager to convey the message that the Government would have to keep its side of the bargain: “Other caterers have complained that many of the expected constraints on food standards, particularly removing sweets and chocolate from vending machines, make running a profitable business almost impossible.

Geoffrey Harrison, of Harrison Catering, told the Caterer magazine: ‘We support the push for healthier food, but if you remove the revenue coming into a school, someone has to pick up the tab’.

The French catering giant Sodexho, which runs many British school kitchens, said extra money committed by the government was taking too long to reach school caterers. It added that standards proposed by the new government-sponsored school meals review panel were too expensive, and said spending in primary schools needs to be raised to at least 70p if new standards are to be met”.

That they have been put on the defensive is clear from the following statements: “Mike Bailey, Compass chief executive, said British school dinners were the biggest challenge facing the company, which provides meals around the world from the Pentagon to offshore oil rigs. The caterer was staggered by the level of parental anger sparked by Oliver’s television programme, and has blamed the ‘Jamie effect’ for a rise in the number of parents opting out of school meals altogether.

Mr Bailey said yesterday there were signs that the number of children eating school meals was picking up. ‘We have developed and are introducing more healthy eating concepts that meet standards, including fresh fruit and salad bars, pasta dishes, fresh ‘home-cooked’ dishes of the day and yoghurt bars. And we are starting to see the first signs of increased participation, though [the] government has recognised it will take time to see these changes through’”.

Sarah Cassidy, in Caterers in fightback against ‘Oliver effect’ (The Independent, 19^th June 2006), noted that the industry was not about to take the attacks lying down: “School caterers are to launch a fightback against the ‘Jamie Oliver effect’, which they blame for the slump in demand for school meals.

They will use a national television campaign to try to restore parents’ confidence in school dinners, which they believe was damaged by the chef’s programmes.

There has been a 12.5 per cent fall in numbers eating school dinners since Oliver began highlighting his concerns about school food in March last year. His Channel 4 series Jamie’s School Dinners has been credited with forcing the setting of tough new nutritional standards for school food, including banning chips more than twice a week and insisting on at least two portions of fruit and vegetables a day.

Caterers argue that the campaign worsened the diets of some children by persuading their parents to withdraw them from their school dinners and supply unhealthy packed lunches full of processed foods.

‘We are looking to produce an advert to counter the negative publicity that Jamie Oliver has brought about,’ said Kevin McKay, chairman of the Local Authority Caterers’ Association”.

Andrew Levy, in Lunchtime lessons for pupils who can’t cope with cutlery, (Daily Mail, 19th May 2006) revisited the sneering “defective parents” theme (observe also the patronising undertones of class hostility – these “uncultured ruffians” do not possess the most rudimentary grasp of good manners and are so slack-jawed primitive that they can only gorge on the swill they satisfy their animal appetites with using their fingers): "A primary school is employing a member of staff solely to teach pupils how to use a knife and fork.

Teachers have noticed many children having trouble using cutlery at school mealtimes.

They believe someone needs to teach them the skills they may be missing out on at home.

Children aged four to 11 will also be shown how to socialise with other pupils while sitting at the table and to choose healthy foods at Burrowmoor School in March, Cambridgeshire.

‘Lots of children don’t know how to use a knife and fork,’ headmistress Anna Traer-Goffe said yesterday. ‘They are often given something to eat in front of the TV or eat on their own because parents eat later.

‘Children recognise what knives and forks are but often find manipulating two instruments quite tricky.

‘We are trying to develop all-round, educated children who will become successful, confident adults. Reading, writing and arithmetic are massive parts of that but so is sitting down with a group of people at a table and communicating effectively and enjoying the social experience’.

Last year David Hart, the retiring general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, warned that children were starting school lacking key social skills.

Irresponsible or overworked parents were leaving the job to teachers, leading to a drastic deterioration in their behaviour. ‘Children are coming into school for the first time not toilet-trained or able to use a knife and fork,’ he said.

‘Youngsters too often lack key social skills such as listening to others, saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and taking turns’.

Earlier this month, his successor, Mick Brookes, criticised the ‘loving neglect’ of parents who are too soft to impose rules on how much television their children watch, what they eat and when they go to bed. As a result many are unfit to learn, unable to pay attention and even fall asleep at desks.

Burrowmoor School, which has 420 pupils, is advertising for a support teacher who will be paid up to £9.35 per hour.

The teacher will work seven and a half hours each week and be on hand to liaise with cooks and teachers.

As well as teaching children to use cutlery, duties will include instilling good manners and introducing a reward scheme for having fruit or vegetables in packed lunches.

Teachers’ unions and education experts said the decline had become entrenched over the past decade.

Nursery and primary schools were now the key battleground to tackling the problem”.

A companion piece lamented the nutritional illiteracy laid bare by the contents of the aluminium foil or plastic container: "The packed lunches parents prepare for their children are a ‘nutritional disaster’, a leading health expert warned yesterday. Dr Helen Crawley, a nutritionist and senior lecturer at Kingston University in South-West London, said schools should monitor the contents of lunchboxes or ban them altogether.

She warned that a Government initiative to improve children’s diets at school would fail unless lunchboxes became healthier.

Dr Crawley said parents were packing them with crisps and chocolates because they were scared of disappointing their children. She pointed to a recent report which showed packed lunches contained double the recommended intake of saturated fat and sugar and up to half the recommended salt intake. Almost half of those surveyed had no fruit or vegetables.

‘Most packed lunches are a nutritional disaster. However bad the school meals were, packed lunches are worse,’ she told a conference in London staged by the charity Heads, Teachers and Industry.

The Department for Education said it had ‘no plans’ to introduce standards for packed lunches. But it said the new School Food Trust would provide advice for parents on their contents later this year".

My Mother recalled with pride how she had always been at home during the lunch break to prepare three courses for me whilst I was at primary (when she did start working part-time her shift started at 17.00), soup, main dish, pudding. When I moved to secondary, however, I wanted to stay put and not miss out on the company of my peers (initially, I was assigned to the branch of the Academy near my house, along with the rest of my intake, but in third year I was “promoted” to Viewlands, reserved for the most academically able seniors. This necessitated a long uphill trudge of well over a mile every morning, which precluded me from continuing with lunches at home even had I wanted them) and begged to be allowed a packed lunch. I determined its composition: a sandwich (on white Scottish plain bread), a packet of salt and vinegar crisps and a Mars Bar usually with a can of Coke (or Tab once I succumbed to the whims of fashion). The very ingredients guaranteed to send shivers down the teachers’ spines. It has not evolved into an engrained habit: the last occasion I ate such a lunch was the last day at school. My Mother kept up the meat and two veg of British tradition in the evenings (although she always had to rush out the door), but she would never have succeeded in compelling me to munch an apple instead of the layers of caramel and chocolate. Nor did she lose sleep over whether I would end up guzzling inordinate quantities of the stuff. She had the intelligence to let me be without worrying unduly. She was right.

The Daily Mail (unattributed, 8th June 2006) carried an extremely worrying hint of where militancy can lead in Teachers seize pupils’ snacks: "Primary school teachers raided children’s lunchboxes to confiscate chocolate and crisps in a crackdown on junk food.

Children were left in tears after their snacks and treats were taken away until the end of the school day.

Following the raid a group of angry parents marched on the school to complain about the heavy-handed tactics.

Debbie Cummins described yesterday how her sever-year-old son Christopher’s packed lunch had fallen foul of the new regime at Bayards Hill primary school in Headington, Oxford.

She said the early morning lunchbox inspections, which saw unhealthy food locked away until home time, was going too far.

‘I’ve got no problem with healthy eating, but I’ve got a problem with schools and the Government telling me what to do,’ she said. ‘Christopher’s packed lunch contained a sandwich, fruit juice, a yoghurt, a packet of crisps and a chocolate biscuit. Normally I give them a mixed salad with apples, oranges, grapes and pear’.

Mrs Cummins, 43, added: ‘What made me angry was that the school canteen actually served pizza and chips the same day it was taking packets of crisps off children. So it’s one rule for hot and one for cold? How long until they start telling us what to give them at home? Where are they going to draw the line about how we bring up our own children?’

Christopher’s father James Cummins also said: ‘They took out a packet of cheese and onion crisps and a chocolate digestive biscuit but they didn’t replace these items.

‘They took a third of my son’s lunch and never offered an alternative. He said to me when he came home that tomorrow he wants to take a rope to school so he can tie the teacher up and eat his lunch in peace’.

Sheila Masterson, 58, said her eight-year-old granddaughter Chelsea had her chocolate biscuits removed, leaving her in tears. ‘They just took the food out of the lunchboxes,’ she said. ‘A lot of the children were crying’.

Keith Ponsford, headmaster of the 350-pupil school admitted that staff had been ‘a bit vigorous’ during the crackdown.

He said that the school was working towards being awarded ‘healthy school’ status, which is awarded for serving nutritious meals.

‘We wrote to parents at the end of last term urging them not to send their children in with chocolate and crisps,’ he said.

‘What’s happened here is that one or two of our staff have been a bit vigorous, taking out crisps and chocolate and giving them back at the end of the day. I think strong encouragement is as far as we can go’.

Mr Ponsford said the school had rejected a complete ban on crisps and chocolate. ‘Some schools ban junk food altogether but I have my doubts about that. It smacks too much of George Orwell’s 1984,’ he said".

I fully empathise with the outrage expressed by the parents. Our reliance on the government to eradicate all ills has the potential to backfire on us as the danger of “mission creep” is ever-present. It would appear to be a law of government to arrogate powers unto itself under the guise of “knowing best”. The idea that a schoolteacher (not a trained expert in matters pertaining to nutrition) would take it upon themselves to “impound” what they had deemed unsuitable makes my blood boil. It is an utterly self-defeating exercise in control (surely the kids will pick up on the “coolness” of rebelling by eating more of the forbidden foods) for the greater good of earning a distinction (“healthy eating school”). Where conflict between the goal of nurturing pupils and chasing a label that might attract a “better class of parent” (which would in turn, the logic unfolds, lead to an improvement in exam performance and clambering up the league table) might arise, there is no doubt concerning the school’s priorities: they do not include sparing emotional distress and psychological trauma on the part of their charges.

Advertising

Abigail Townsend (The Independent on Sunday, 5^th February 2006) in Banned after the break broached the issue of a possible ban on advertising along similar lines to the policy on banishing plugs for the noxious weed from the small screen: “Along with underage and binge drinking (…) obesity has become a big concern. The EU estimates that 14 million Europeans are clinically overweight, while in Britain, a fifth of 12-to 16-year-olds are obese.

But whether that is solely down to marketing is a moot point. Jeremy Preston, the director of the Advertising Association’s Food Advertising Unit, points the finger of blame at modern lifestyles. ‘I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s,’ he says, ‘and my diet was considerably worse than it is today – fresh food wasn’t available like it is now. But we had one television set, my parents didn’t have a car and I had to cycle, take the bus or walk. Advertising is an easy target’.

Mr Preston hopes to take issue with those who call for advertising for children to go the way of tobacco marketing and be banned. He points to 2004 research from Ofcom that found the average child saw five food adverts a day, only two of which were in dedicated children’s programming.

‘So when you call for bans, I think, ‘Are you really serious that banning five adverts will make a difference?’ I struggle to understand that’.

The current rules on advertising to children are vague. The ASA says adverts must not exploit a child’s inherent vulnerability and lack of sophistication, but that’s about it. A report last week by the consumer body Which? condemned the marketing tactics used by snack food manufacturers, which, it claimed, ‘lure children into eating more unhealthy food’.

Advertising spending has also shifted away from television, its traditional home. To name but a few strategies, companies use sponsorship, the internet, text messaging, competitions, celebrity endorsement, product placement and even themed toys. (Argos, for example, sells a McDonald’s Play Food Set, complete with plastic Chicken McNuggets)”.

Manufacturers are sensitive to the fact that the barometer of opinion has moved from fair to stormy: “Most companies, however, have seen the writing on the wall and are abandoning aggressive campaigns. In the US, soft drinks manufacturers are pulling their products out of elementary schools (although many schools are suffering a drop in funding as a result), while McDonald’s is putting nutritional labels on its burgers and shakes.

In Britain, Cadbury Schweppes agreed in 2004 to cease advertising to children under the age of eight. And Walkers – which has been criticised for its use of a child-friendly celebrity, Gary Lineker – relaunched its crisps last week with less saturated fat and salt”.

Ian Burrell (The Independent, 27^th February 2006) in No more salty gags for Walkers discussed the impact of the shift in national mood as exemplified by a series of ads revolving around the persona of a sporting figure (in the dual sense of being physically fit and eschewing foul play), which have etched themselves into the British popular consciousness: “(…) these much-anticipated new television ads are not quite the funny, irreverent snippets of panto that we have come to expect during a decade of the crisp-snatching antics of Gary ‘No More Mr Nice Guy’ Lineker.

Yes, the former England football captain remains at the forefront of what is the longest-running celebrity campaign in British ad history, but his role has changed altogether.

Whereas once he was an architect of mischief, encouraging viewers to treat themselves to a little guilty pleasure, now he is a figure of responsibility, reciting facts and figures before the camera. A packet of Walkers now has ’70 per cent less sat fat’ and ‘8 per cent GDA [Guideline Daily Allowance]’, he declares, using terminology more traditionally associated with a scientist than a soccer legend.

PepsiCo UK, the company that owns Walkers, is spending £20m on advertising what it claims is the biggest relaunch in its history, as it drastically cuts the amount of artery-clogging saturated fat in its product (from 3.5g to 0.9g in a packet of cheese and onion, though overall girth-spreading fat content remains the same, at a not inconsiderable 11.4g).

It has fallen to Peter Souter, the executive creative director turned deputy chairman of the advertising agency AMV BBDO, to find a way of getting the dietary message across without blowing the equity built up in the previously humorous Lineker campaigns, where Gary has been known to don a schoolgirl uniform and other unlikely disguises.

Souter’s idea has been to turn the original campaign idea on its head and make Lineker the trustworthy goody-goody once again. ‘More Mr Nice Guy’, if you will. ‘It’s ironic, really, because Gary got hired in the first place because he was a squeaky-clean footballer who we turned into a bad guy and now he is the perfect spokesman for saying ‘Get your kids to eat a good diet and have a bit of fun,’ says Souter.

‘There was some debate that, because the product has gone through quite a change, should the way we bring it in front of people change? Should we drop Gary? My feeling all along has been that it would look panicky, it would look like the wrong thing to do. There’s nothing wrong with what we’ve been doing. We are not the bad guys’.

In the past, the campaign had ‘never really needed to do more than remind you [eating crisps] was a really nice way to spend three minutes’. That has changed with growing Government concern over the costs of rising obesity levels”.

Against the backdrop of a rising tide of moral indignation finding a solution has proven a challenge to the creative ingenuity of even a seasoned professional in the realm of persuasion: “(…) the adman, who also goes out of his way to mention his lifelong support of the Labour Party and his frustration that the Government is ‘closing a school playground every day’ (thus, presumably, denying kids the chance to run off a packet of Walkers), while ministers lambaste makers of snack foods. ‘You don’t get obese eating a packet of crisps. You get obese eating curry and pizza and not doing any exercise, leading a sedentary life’.

By casting a BBC presenter almost as a Mr Cholmondeley-Warner public information service (Lineker compares the salt levels of Walkers and a slice of bread and the fat levels of Walkers and a chocolate biscuit), Souter has had to jump through many hoops to ensure the ads comply with the British Code of Advertising”.

Lineker himself had expressed concern that the new ads were not sufficiently funny (their condensed “story lines” hitherto revolving around various devious ploys to steal the irresistible slivers of fried potato from schoolchildren, the humour of which derives from the viewers’ knowledge of Lineker’s unblemished reputation in reality as a player in an aggressive game who was never once booked, his clean-cut image an eminently bankable asset): “Crucial, then, is Lineker’s pay-off line in each of the new ads: ‘Just thought you’d like to know,’ which gives the ads a slightly less didactic feel, where Lineker comes across as less of an establishment figure and more a trusted uncle or fellow parent”.

Souter “argues that it is very important that the campaign he has devised for Britain’s biggest crisp brand ‘does not appear apologetic’ and contrasts the approach with recent advertising for McDonald’s, which has often concentrated on the availability of new healthier food options. ‘McDonald’s look like they are committing suicide in public. They seem apologetic. The fact they work so hard to say ‘We sell salads’, to me says, in brackets, ‘Don’t eat the dead cow’,” he says.

‘People say crisps and sweets are bad for you. When they say sweets it [affects] 100 brands, but, because we are the biggest crisps brand by miles, it hits us really hard. We just wanted to do some ads that tell you exactly how it is and that it is OK to eat a bag of crisps a day’”.

Felicity Lawrence (The Guardian, 11^th April 2006) in Viewers object to Lineker’s crisp claims gauges Souter’s success: “Walkers crisps adverts featuring Gary Lineker are being investigated by the Advertising Standards Authority following complaints about their claims over reduced salt and fat levels.

Viewers have objected that a TV commercial and poster make unjustified health claims about new recipes for the crisps, the authority said. The poster showed Gary Lineker holding a packet of ready salted crisps in one hand and a slice of bread in the other. A caption compared the salt content of the two products, saying they both contained ‘as little’ as each other. The TV commercial, also featuring the former football star, says that saturated fat levels in Walker’s crisps have been reduced by 70%.

The campaign group Cash (Consensus Action on Salt and Health) also submitted a complaint to the ASA yesterday about salt claims made in promotional leaflets for Walkers crisps.

Cash’s chairman, Graham MacGregor, said that Walkers had made small reductions in the amount of salt but implied in its marketing material that all its crisps were now better for you. ‘To imply that a Walkers salt and vinegar Quaver is better for you when it contains two and a half times the salt level of seawater is preposterous,’ Prof MacGregor said. ‘In the short term these products will make people, and young children in particular, very thirsty, and in the longer term they will contribute to raised blood pressure and increased risk of strokes and heart attacks’.

Cash challenges Walkers’ assertion that a standard bag of its crisps now contains 8% of an adult’s guideline daily amount of salt – the same amount of salt as a slice of bread. Most bread in the UK is classed as high in salt according to the Food Standards Agency definition, whereas the advert implies the crisps are now low in salt, cash says. Moreover guideline daily amounts on salt for children are lower, so a standard bag of crisps contains 25% of the daily guideline of salt for a three-year-old.

The ASA said it was investigating six complaints about the poster and three about the TV advert. ‘People believe they are misleading claims because they imply that the crisps are healthier than they actually are,’ a spokesman said.

Walkers said its adverts put crisps into context by comparing them with other popular foods. It said the leaflet that cash had complained about invited consumers to visit the product’s website where full nutritional information was available. A Walkers spokesman said: ‘We would be more than happy to speak to the ASA if they have any concerns.

‘All our facts and figures were validated by an independent nutritionist prior to use and we therefore do not believe that our communications are misleading’”.

Lineker’s Walkers ads have been seized upon as emblematic of the sinister effects of brainwashing the young before they have acquired sufficient powers of discernment to allow them to separate fact from fiction. Perhaps the flames of indignation have also been fanned because with his lean, active body Lineker represents the antithesis of the flabby customer presumed to gawp at football broadcasts as opposed to kicking an actual ball around in the back garden or the pitch, his sporting fame milked for precisely the connotations of health and activity that inhere to it. The implicit hypocrisy to which the press had previously turned a blind eye was now to be debunked (I recall the derision that greeted Posh Spice in her companion ad when it emerged that after so ostentatiously simulating ecstasy with the crisp as required she spat it out off camera, confirming that women celebrities are subjected to more rigorous moral scrutiny than their male counterparts).

A victim of his visibility and the integrity that had become connected with his name (surely a decent fellow should be the last to become embroiled in profiting from such a sordid venture as peddling life-sapping, artery-clogging dross to the innocent), Lineker was merely the most prominent figure to come under fire. Sean Poulter (Daily Mail, 27^th March 2006) had earlier intimated the impending threat to a lucrative sideline for the stars in Junk food adverts will be banned from children’s TV: “TV watchdogs aim to ban junk food adverts during children’s programmes.

Ofcom will outline plans tomorrow to stop unhealthy foods being advertised on children’s television.

This will prevent firms from targeting children by using cartoon characters and celebrities such as Gary Lineker, David Beckham and Britney Spears.

Health and consumer groups criticised the proposals, insisting that they did not go far enough.

It is expected Ofcom will ban advertising foods high in fat, salt and sugar from early morning – before children go to school – through until 6pm, and possibly 7.30pm.

Banned products would include takeaway burgers, chicken nuggets, fries, sugar-coated puffed oats, such as Sugar Puffs, Corn Flakes, which are relatively high in salt, crisps, cola and other sugary drinks. Health campaigners want ads for all foods that are high in fat, salt and sugar banned until after the 9pm watershed.

This could outlaw Cadbury’s from continuing its sponsorship of Coronation Street”.

The cynicism of the preferred tactics for hooking them young was exposed: “Cartoon characters, pop music and images of youngsters tucking into the snacks are all used in adverts.

Promotions or competitions involving computer games, pop music, theme parks and films are also used”.

The Government stance had hardened as the clamour of criticism concerning its indifference had built up to a crescendo: “Ofcom has been told by the Government to draw up a regime that will control the advertising of unhealthy food.

But the watchdog has previously indicated it believes there is little value in controls and supports minimum regulation.

The proposals would be based on voluntary regulation with the industry. Government ministers have threatened to force a crackdown with a change in the law if changes are not implemented”.

Virtual saturation meant that children could hardly escape absorbing a message so relentlessly repeated: “Richard Watts of Sustain said: ‘The statistics show that about 70 per cent of commercials during children’s viewing are for food. Of these, something like 80 to 100 per cent are for junk.

‘These are the wrong messages to send children at a time when we are seeing an increase in weight problems’”.

Established practices of carefully targeted slots showed how the executives had been able to achieve maximum effect in manipulating their target audience unimpeded by scruple: “Jane Landon, deputy chief executive of the NHF [National Heart Forum], said: ‘The watershed for allowing the advertising of foods high in fat, salt and sugar should be 9pm’.

Programmes targeted at children tend to be broadcast in the morning, at lunchtime and in the afternoon when pupils have returned home.

The ban would also apply to the entire output of dedicated children’s television stations including the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon”.

To avoid charges of discrimination a blanket ban was being mooted: “Another possibility would be to outlaw all food advertising – even healthy products – before a watershed. This would stop junk food manufacturers being singled out for a ban. National Consumer Council food expert Sue Dibb said: ‘Anything less than full restrictions on all TV ads and promotions for high fat, salt and sugar foods before the 9pm watershed will be extremely disappointing’.

The British Medical Association and backbench Labour MPs also support a total ban on junk food adverts.

Dr Vivienne Nathanson, head of science and ethics at the BMA, said: ‘Children and parents are surrounded by the marketing of unhealthy cereals, snacks and processed meals. This has to stop’.

The Food and Drink Federation rejected the need for restrictions. A spokesman said: ‘Any simplistic scheme that demonises products doesn’t take into account the complexity of people’s lifestyles and the way they eat’.

The UK boss of McDonalds, Peter Beresford, has made clear that he rejects TV advertising restrictions. He says McDonald’s is not to blame for rising obesity, adding: ‘There is no good food or bad food, only bad diets’”.

Owen Gibson (The Guardian, 29^th March 2006) gave a detailed run-down of the likely measures in Watchdog puts ban on celebrities advertising junk food to under-10s: “New rules banning the use of celebrities to advertise junk food during television programmes designed to appeal to the under-10s were announced yesterday as part of proposals to tackle obesity in children.

The rules, which come into effect this autumn, will banish Gary Lineker’s Walkers crisps commercials and Beyoncé’s Pepsi endorsement from ad breaks during children’s shows. Film tie-ins will also be banned, while other measures will outlaw advertising designed to encourage children to pester their parents for foods that are high in salt, sugar and fat.

The package was unveiled by the industry’s regulator, Ofcom, which vowed to cut by half the amount of food and drink advertising seen by children in the UK, one in three of whom are now classified as overweight or obese.

More radical proposals – on top of the new rules announced yesterday – are the subject of consultation and will be introduced next year. Ofcom’s chief executive, Stephen Carter, said: ‘With childhood obesity, the case for targeted action has been made. But which action, and how this should be implemented, is the final stage of consultation’.

But health food campaigners rejected the plans, accusing Ofcom of caving in to pressure from food giants.

Sustain and the National Consumer Council said they would continue to demand a ban on junk food advertising before the 9pm broadcasting watershed. They point out that programmes such as Coronation Street are watched by millions of children.

Campaigners also argued that almost two years after Ofcom was first charged with looking into the issue in a government white paper, the new proposals smacked of delaying tactics. Children’s TV channels will be given three years to put into effect the proposals that will be introduced next year.

‘The food industry’s extensive lobbying campaign appears to have paid off,’ said Richard Watts of Sustain. ‘Ofcom has put the interests of the food and advertising industries before the interests of kids’ health’.

The National Consumer Council’s chief executive, Ed Mayo, said: ‘None of these proposals goes anywhere near what’s needed to redress the imbalance in [TV’s] advertising of unhealthy food to children and so help tackle childhood obesity. Ofcom should have been bolder’.

But Mr Carter said: ‘Some form of volume restriction is justified and proportionate’. He said there was ‘no easy one-size-fits-all’ solution, which was reflected in the lack of consensus.

Three more radical proposals are being considered by Ofcom, all of which include a ban on food and drink advertising to pre-school children on the basis that under-fives cannot distinguish between advertising and programmes. The regulator claimed this would cut the amount of food and drink advertising seen by children by half. The first option is to ban adverts for food high in salt, sugar or fat during children’s programmes or those shows that attract a high number of young viewers, such as The Simpsons and some music and reality shows. The second idea is to ban all food and drink advertising and sponsorship in programmes specifically made for children under nine. The third would limit food and drink adverts to 30 seconds an hour during times when children were most likely to be watching, and 60 seconds an hour between 6pm and 8pm.

The first proposal is seen as most likely to come to fruition, given that the second would also ban adverts for healthy food and the third would be vigorously opposed by broadcasters such as ITV.

Implementation of either of the first two proposals would hit the finances of dedicated children’s channels the hardest. Ofcom also offered broadcasters and advertisers a fourth route, allowing them to present their own proposals.

Advertisers and broadcasters, which have been lobbying regulators and the government, yesterday repeated their view that any measures had to be ‘practical and proportionate’. ITV said that any action that hit advertising revenues would lead to lower programme investment”.

Sean Poulter (Daily Mail, 29^th March 2006) displayed the tenacity of a terrier, teeth clamped into a tender ankle, in refusing to let the theme drop with Watchdog bans celebrity junk food ads for under-10s: “The crisp-pilfering antics of Gary Lineker will be seriously curtailed under a new health-conscious regime for children’s TV advertising.

Watchdogs are banning the use of celebrities in junk food commercials aimed at under-10s in a bid to tackle the obesity timebomb [sic].

Lineker’s campaign for Walker’s crisps, in which he mischievously steals the snack from youngsters, is believed to have boosted sales massively.

The ban could also restrict appearances by the likes of David Beckham and Britney Spears for Pepsi. And cartoon characters such as Thomas the Tank and The Simpsons will be returned to their rightful role as entertainers rather than peddlers of sweets and snacks”.

Poulter highlighted the shortcomings of the action envisaged: “One weakness of the crackdown on celebrity advertising is that the ban is confined to commercials that would appeal to under-10s. This is a subjective judgement and would be left to Ofcom to police.

Health and consumer groups complained the proposals do not go far enough. They want a far more extensive ban on junk food commercials running through until the 9pm watershed.

Chief policy adviser at consumer group Which?, Sue Davies, said: ‘We are extremely disappointed that Ofcom has wasted this opportunity to get to grips with the advertising of foods high in fat, sugar and salt whilst children are watching TV’. National Consumer Council chief executive Ed Mayo, said: ‘None of these proposals goes anywhere near what’s needed to tackle childhood obesity’.

The National heart Forum said: ‘Just turning down the volume of advertising for high fat, sugar and salt foods is not a proportionate response to the crisis in children’s eating habits’.

And the health lobby group Sustain said: ‘Childhood obesity is a public health timebomb [sic]. These weak proposals will do nothing to defuse it’”.

Janet Street-Porter (The Independent, 30^th March 2006) in Stop force-feeding junk food to children deployed her formidable polemical gifts in the service of goading the readers of her column out of their complacency: “Gary Lineker may be a dad, but he must hate children. He currently features in a billboard advertisement for Walker’s crisps. The caption reads: ‘There’s as much salt in these (bag of Walker’s crisps) as this (slice of horrible, white processed bread)’. Parents concerned about their children’s health wouldn’t really want them to eat much of either so the ad is a ridiculous concept. Ofcom’s proposals for dealing with TV ads for junk food, unveiled this week, not only mark a complete inability to face up to the problem of child obesity, but will have no effect whatsoever on all the other ways the powerful food industry will continue to market trash to the young. Gary will just be replaced by more insidious ways of getting crap down the throats of the under-tens.

In 2004, the Government published its White Paper on Health, and Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, asked Ofcom, the broadcasting industry’s regulatory body, to come up with ‘targeted plans’ to deal with junk food advertising aimed at children.

Since then two things have happened. Obesity among the most vulnerable, the very young, has reached dangerous proportions (17 per cent) and now one third of all children are classified as overweight. This is down to two factors: lack of exercise and poor diet. The second has been the hard-core lobbying of Ofcom by the food industry. Facing up to the food giants are campaigning groups from the Consumers Association to the British heart Foundation, many of whom have pressed for a total ban on junk food advertising on television.

Instead of doing what Tessa Jowell requested, Ofcom has dithered and come up with proposals which will now go through a six-month consultation process involving the broadcasting, food and advertising industries.

The new rules won’t be in place until early 2007, three years after the original impetus, and children’s channels will not have to put them into effect for three years. Scandalous. How many more children will have to ruin their health before these median mandarins feel a sense of responsibility?”

Her attack on the unrepresentativeness of the institution (and how out of touch it is in its aloofness to public opinion) is quite rightly uncompromising: “Ofcom’s board consists of seven men and three women. Its executive consists of ten men and one woman. Its policy executive consists of 15 people, two of whom are women. Its operations board has ten people, three of whom are female. Doesn’t exactly sound like an organisation with its agenda set in the 21^st century does it, now that women occupy key positions in all the major broadcasting channels?

But this body, set up by the Government to regulate the modern media industry has demonstrated it simply does not have any understanding of the strength of public opinion on an issue as emotive as young people’s health. It has kow-towed to the broadcasters, who claim that a junk food advertising ban will deplete their advertising revenues catastrophically”.

Having caught a whiff of danger, advertisers are more than one step ahead of the authorities who would curb them: “Ofcom should be castigated for its inept response on several fronts. First, while it has done bugger all for two years, food manufacturers are already devising ways to circumvent any ban or rationing of junk food advertising. Ofcom’s proposals would not apply to cinema, print, billboard, the internet or mobile phones – a serious omission in its terms of reference.

The consumer group Which? identifies a growing trend – websites created by junk food manufacturers aimed at young children. They include free downloads, games and chances to win prizes. These websites also contain ads for junk food, and there is nothing that Ofcom can do about them. Next, junk food is being placed in computer games and many popular films aimed at children.

(…) This is a subtle and insidious form of advertising which will only grow. Microsoft’s MSN Messenger programme, used by more than 10 million people in the UK, has teamed up with McDonald’s in a deal which means the website now contains ads for the burger chain, accessed via a ‘Theme Pack’. MSN claims that 800,000 of their users are under 18, a key market for junk food manufacturers. The ban on the use of famous cartoon characters in television food ads has already been circumvented by the clever development of new characters such as Tony the Tiger, who flogs Frosties breakfast cereals. This ploy is likely to become more prevalent.

Ofcom do not think an outright ban on junk food advertising aimed at children aged nine and under is required because children are able to ‘tell the difference’ between TV programmes and promotions. Piffle! I can tell you that I’ve had hundreds of letters over the years from people in their forties and fifties who cannot tell the difference between ads and the stuff in between.

Most children watch television programmes aimed at adults, such as Coronation Street, and so focusing a ban or a reduced number of slots during children’s programming does not go far enough.

Finally, the BBC is said to be launching a website next year which will carry advertising. It is bound to feature the Corporation’s highly successful cooking and children’s programming – which, no doubt, will attract food advertising from exactly the kind of people that Ofcom has failed to regulate. Ms Jowell should make it plain to the BBC that their commercial plans should not take one penny from the manufacturers of rubbish such as Walkers crisps and Frosties”.

Felicity Lawrence (The Guardian, 22^nd April 2006) kept up the pressure on the powers that be in Industry lobbying ‘derailed junk food ban’: “The broadcasting regulator drew up its controversial proposals on the advertising of junk food for children after being lobbied on 29 occasions by the food and advertising industry, records show.

The meetings took place between May 2005 and last month. In the same period, Ofcom saw health and consumer groups on four occasions.

Campaign groups are now considering boycotting Ofcom’s consultation on the proposed restrictions on advertising, saying they are too weak and put the interests of industry before the welfare of children.

They had wanted junk food advertising banned before the 9pm watershed to protect children of all ages.

Ofcom’s proposals rule out that possibility. Ofcom spokeswoman Kate Stross said: ‘The cost to broadcasters of a ban on such advertising pre-watershed would be very high indeed. We came to the view that it would be disproportionate’. It has been estimated that a ban on food and drink advertising before 9pm would cost broadcasters up to £240m a year.

Instead, Ofcom has suggested three options, including a ban on junk food ads during programmes targeted at children under 10, which would cost broadcasters £28m a year in lost revenue”.

She made no bones about the imbalance between the resources available to the opposing sides (depicted as self-interest versus altruism): “Ofcom defended its suggested curbs yesterday, saying they were ‘proportionate’ to the ‘complex problem of obesity’.

The records were obtained under a freedom of information request by Sustain, a coalition of 160 health and consumer groups.

They show that Ofcom met representatives from broadcasters of children’s programmes, the food industry and advertising industry 29 times between May 2005 and last month. Turner Broadcasting, which owns CNN and the Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, ITV, Channels 4 and 5, and the satellite and cable broadcasters group all met Ofcom, as did the Food and Drink Federation, Kraft, Unilever and Cadbury Schweppes.

Twelve meetings with industry took place before the first with health groups was held.

Mary Creagh, MP for Wakefield and sponsor of a private member’s bill on children’s food, said: ‘I am disappointed by Ofcom’s lack of consultation with health and consumer campaigners. They have ruled out a 9pm watershed, which is the only way to stop junk food advertising to children and tackle the timebomb [sic] of childhood obesity. Advertisers are now planning their autumn campaigns, and these delays will mean that they can avoid any changes to the broadcast code before 2007’.

The consumer watchdog Which? said the Ofcom proposals would not address the issue of obesity. ‘Even the toughest of the weak options proposed by Ofcom would not actually cover the programmes children are actually watching,’ Which? policy expert Michelle Smyth said.

Ms Stross said: ‘There are a lot of players in industry and we say yes if they want to see us. Consumer groups tended to come to see us together’”.

Tim Suter, a partner at Ofcom, availed himself of the right to reply in Childhood obesity cannot just be blamed on the box (The Guardian, 5^th May 2006): “Our job as the broadcasting regulator is to protect viewers from exploitation and harm, and to ensure that they have available to them a wide range of programmes and services.

Ofcom’s current consultation on the advertising of food and drink products to children set out various options, each of which would achieve a significant reduction in the volume of such advertising. This has to be seen as part of a much broader public policy initiative to combat the problem of child obesity. Our research demonstrated that while there is a direct link between advertising and children’s food choices, it is modest when compared with all the other influences on children, and our proposals reflect that. The proposals have been informed by recent academic research into the causes of child obesity.

To support a claim that Ofcom is prepared to sacrifice the physical and psychological wellbeing of children to appease the commercial broadcasters, Mr Monbiot states that Ofcom held 29 meetings with food producers and ‘just four’ with health and consumer groups, implying that Ofcom is somehow biased towards the industry at the expense of the consumer. Neither the charge, nor the evidence, is true.

Ofcom met many organisations in its deliberations on this extremely complex issue. We responded positively to any request for a meeting including with those groups representing a very broad range of consumer views. Many of the meetings reported as with food advertisers were, in fact, with the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice, the advertising regulator with whom we share responsibility in this area.

George Monbiot cites a recent Which? report that is critical of Ofcom’s proposals as it relates to children watching programmes outside children’s programming. This evidence was already consulted two years ago and explains why our options are built upon a requirement that all advertising for food and drink, wherever it is placed in the schedule, should be done responsibly and comply with toughened content rules. We have also included an option that would limit advertising outside children’s airtime as well. We believe this is proportionate and consistent with the responses to our own research into what parents wanted. Less than half wanted a ban before the 9pm watershed.

Ofcom always seeks to be open and transparent. It became clear in our detailed discussions with a broad range of organisations that there is no clear consensus on the most appropriate course of action beyond a general agreement that some form of action is appropriate and necessary. Which action – and how this should be implemented – is the focus of the final stage of Ofcom’s consultation.

We stand by the proposals we have put out for public consultation, and look forward to the responses. We hope they will be characterised by thoughtful engagement with the full complexity of the issue”.

Sean Poulter (Daily Mail, 23^rd May 2006) provided evidence that grass roots resolve to force a more robust Government marker was far from flagging in Legal fight to ban junk food ads before 9pm: “Doctors, teachers and charities are planning legal action to secure a ban on all junk food TV advertising before the 9pm watershed.

They are proposing to take broadcasting watchdog Ofcom to court to force it to consider a blanket ban on commercials for crisps, fast food, sweets and sugary drinks before 9pm.

Ofcom is currently consulting on limited controls that would outlaw commercials for products high in fat, salt or sugar during children’s normal viewing times.

This does not go far enough, according to the National Heart Forum, whose members include the British Medical Association, the British Heart Foundation and the National Union of Teachers.

It publishes research today showing two in three parents support the blanket ban on junk food commercials before the watershed. It hopes a judicial review will force Ofcom to consult the nation on such a ban.

Ofcom has argued that this would cost commercial TV channels too much in lost advertising. It would also be disastrous for brands such as McDonald’s, Kellogg’s and Coca-Cola.

A watershed ban would also threaten programme sponsorship deals such as the link between Cadbury and Coronation Street.

Jane Landon of the National Heart Forum, said: ‘We are dismayed that Ofcom has weighed industry profits against children’s health. It has forced us to take this unprecedented step of seeking a fair consultation through the courts’”.

Poulter’s flow of articles waged a war of attrition on the recalcitrant, his next contribution Junk food commercials ‘are fuelling child obesity’ (Daily Mail, 9th June 2006): "Junk food advertising on television is fuelling Britain’s childhood obesity epidemic, a leading academic has warned.

Youngsters eat significantly more after being bombarded with the advertisements, says Professor Sonia Livingstone.

The messages also skew children’s food choices towards unhealthy products high in fat, sugar and salt, she says, citing studies from around the world.

Professor Livingstone, a social psychologist, argues there should be controls on advertising to protect the young.

Her conclusions will be seized upon by health campaigners.

The British Medical Association, the Royal College of Physicians, the British Heart Foundation and consumer groups such as Which? want junk food advertisements banned before the 9pm TV watershed.

Their fierce lobbying campaign includes a threat to take the broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, to court unless it considers this drastic measure.

Ofcom has fought shy of a total ban before 9pm, warning it would be disastrous for the income of commercial broadcasters.

Instead, it is considering a more limited ban around children’s viewing times.

The watchdog commissioned Professor Livingstone last year to analyse the mass of research into the issue carried out by academics around the world.

The professor, of the London School of Economics, is a leading British expert on the impact of TV advertising. She supports some controls, but said she did not feel able to say whether a ban on advertising until 9pm was appropriate.

Professor Livingstone said there was growing evidence that advertisements had a ‘modest direct effect on children’s food choices’.

In 2003 the Food Standards Agency concluded that ‘food promotion is having an effect, particularly on children’s preferences, purchase behaviour and consumption’.

In 2004 the US Institute of Medicine found ‘food and beverage marketing influences the preferences and purchase requests of children, influences consumption at least in the short term, is a likely contributor to less healthful diets, and may contribute to negative diet-related health outcomes and risks among children and youth’.

Also in 2004 a British study found children aged nine to 11 ate ’significantly more’ after exposure to food advertisements.

Professor Livingstone, who did not carry out any new research for her study, said: ‘I do think there should be some restriction of advertising foods high in fat, sugar and salt.

‘The fact is that children are watching TV up until 9pm. There is no doubt that when they are watching TV they are being encouraged to eat things that are unhealthy’.

She added: ‘There is growing public concern over rising levels of obesity among children, in the UK and many other countries in the developed world.

‘The Royal College of Physicians reports that obesity doubled among two to four-year-olds between 1990 and 2002 in the UK’.

She said it would be too simplistic to blame TV advertising alone for these trends, as factors such as gender, the cost of food, and the eating habits of family and friends could also have a powerful effect.

The food and advertising industry have funded their own studies which have questioned the validity of the studies drawing a link between commercials and obesity.

As a result, the impact of food advertising on children is mired in confusion.

But Professor Livingstone argues (…) that it is sensible to ‘err on the side of caution’ in order to protect the young.

Professor Peter Kopelman of the Royal College of Physicians, one of the leading campaigners for strict controls, said: ‘We are facing a crisis of obesity and poor health in children.

‘We know that advertising has a part to play in shaping children’s diets and that TV is the principal medium for food advertising’”.

The accompanying piece, Pooh, Tigger and friends join the fight to give fruit appeal furnished surely the ultimate proof of how explosive the question of advertising had become: "Disney is using the power of its cartoon characters to drive sales of fruit and vegetables.

The company has linked to the sale of satsumas at Tesco.

It is drawing up plans to use Jungle Book characters to support sales of mini bananas and apples.

The decision follows calls from politicians, doctors and consumer groups in Britain for big brands to use their marketing muscle to improve children’s diets.

In the past Disney has been criticised for its relationship with McDonald’s, which has involved offering collectible toys as gifts with Happy Meals.

This partnership, which has generated millions of pounds in royalties for Disney, will lapse at the en of this year.

The new deal with the Tesco Satsumas involves collectible stickers of the Pooh characters originally created by A. A. Milne.

Disney spokesman Rochelle Gosling said: ‘We want to engage with children in a way where they want to eat more fruit. The idea of putting collectible stickers on the fruit is to encourage youngsters to come back for more’.

Disney is not withdrawing from offering ‘treat’ foods such as sweets and cakes. But, Miss Gosling said: ‘We are looking at the portfolio to ensure it is balanced’.

Tesco said: ‘This new and innovative joint venture with Disney and our supplier is a great way to harness pester power and use it to get kids eating more healthily’".

If even a titan like Disney is fretting about its reputation being tarnished the cultural swing has already been accomplished.

Poulter reiterated the clarion call in Ban the junk food ads (Daily Mail, 15^th June 2006): “A full ban on television advertising of junk food before the 9pm watershed is being demanded by a Government watchdog.

Experts at the Food Standards Agency say drastic action is needed to protect children up to the age of 15 from being bombarded with commercials.

They want TV adverts of all foods high in fat, salt and sugar prohibited before 9pm.

Such a move would be a hammer blow to big brands such as McDonald’s, KFC, Walkers, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Kellogg’s and Nestlé, and would end sponsorship deals such as Cadbury’s tie-up with Coronation Street.

The FSA proposals – contained in a report to be discussed by its board today in Bristol – come against a background of spiralling obesity, particularly among children, and related health problems.

The report includes a broadside at the Government’s TV and communications regulator Ofcom, which has been ordered to draw up controls on junk food advertising.

Ofcom has argued for a limited ban on commercials which would only be in place around children’s conventional viewing times.

It insists an advertising ban is only necessary to protect children aged nine and under.

But furious officials at the FSA believe the Ofcom proposals are totally inadequate in the context of the current child health crisis.

They suggest the regulator is putting the interests of commercial TV channels and food manufacturers before children and their health.

The FSA report rubbishes Ofcom’s minimal controls saying ‘none of them adequately addresses the issue’. Studies for the agency have shown how TV advertising of unhealthy products affects the food choices of children aged from two through to 15.

Consequently, it argues that Ofcom is wrong to concentrate its proposals on only protecting children under nine and suggests the only practical, meaningful measure is a ban to the watershed.

‘We consider that this offers a practical means of extending protection to older age groups, which is consistent with other broadcasting controls and would therefore support that approach,’ it says.

The FSA has drawn up nutrient profiles to help Ofcom identify unhealthy foods which should be banned from advertising.

However the food industry is desperate to avoid any regime that labels some products – such as crisps, sugary drinks and cereals – as bad and others as good.

Food giants argue that controls should cover all food and drink, not just those considered unhealthy.

The bulk of Ofcom’s proposals, which are currently out for consultation, appear to side with the industry on this key point.

However, the FSA argues this is unacceptable in health terms. It says any such policy would prevent the advertising of healthy foods.

The watchdog also said banning all food adverts would remove the incentive on [sic] companies to improve the health of their products in an effort to be accepted for TV.

And it expressed surprise that Ofcom rejected its request to extend consultation on TV advertising to allow it longer to respond, but agreed when the industry asked for extra time.

The FSA line will be cheered by an alliance of food, health and consumer groups lobbying for a junk food TV ban until 9pm.

This alliance – the National heart Forum – has even launched a High Court legal case to force Ofcom to put this on the agenda.

A recent poll by the British heart Foundation found 68 per cent of parents support a ban on junk food advertising until 9pm. Its director general, Pete Hollins, said: ‘A pre-watershed ban would remove 82 per cent of food advertising aimed at children aged 4-15, and make a significant contribution to improving children’s food choices – a key factor in tackling the childhood obesity epidemic.

‘Ofcom appears to have lost sight of the brief it was given to protect children from bombardment by junk food advertising, and now seems more concerned with protecting the interests of broadcasters and advertisers’.

Commercial TV channels could lose up to £140million a year in advertising revenue if the FSA line was adopted.

Ofcom says this would seriously damage its ability to finance good quality children’s programmes.

While it is up to Ofcom to draw up recommendations on what controls will be brought in, the Government will have the final say.

If ministers support Ofcom, rather than the FSA, they will be accused of putting commerce ahead of children’s health”.

Felicity Lawrence likewise publicised the rift between the agencies in Ofcom urged to stiffen policy on junk food (The Guardian, 15^th June 2006): “The Food Standards Agency put itself on collision course with the broadcasting regulator Ofcom yesterday when it posted an audiotape outline of its board members agreeing that none of Ofcom’s proposals to restrict junk food advertising to children were tough enough.

The agency’s board members described Ofcom’s proposals on junk food advertising as nervous, lacking in courage, and ‘extraordinarily disappointing’. They were, said one FSA board member, ‘watered-down half-hearted options’. The FSA wants Ofcom to look at banning the advertising of all food and drink high in fat, salt and/or sugar before the 9pm watershed, an option Ofcom has already ruled out as ‘disproportionately’ damaging to the broadcasting industry.

Instead Ofcom has proposed three weaker options to restrict marketing of junk foods aimed at children under nine. The FSA is expected to reject Ofcom’s options and call for a pre-watershed ban to protect all children under 15 at its full board meeting tomorrow, a view also held by the National Heart Forum and Which?

Ofcom was asked to draw up rules on advertising food and drink to children after the government’s commitment to tackle childhood obesity in its 2004 health white paper. It produced a consultation on TV advertising to children in March. It said yesterday it welcomed all views and contributions to its consultation process”.

The following day the topic was elevated to headline status (Patrick Wintour, The Guardian, 16^th June 2006), Radical moves to tackle obesity crisis: “Controls on junk food advertising could be extended to websites, text messaging, computer games, cinemas and posters under radical plans being drawn up by the government (…)

Ministers fear that plans to clamp down solely on TV advertising would be undermined without a more ambitious approach and are putting together a range of measures to tackle the problem.

They plan to encourage shops and supermarkets to offer extra loyalty card bonus points to customers buying healthy foods low in salt, sugar and fat. And GPs may be monitored to see whether they are prioritising obesity among children.

Details of the plans will be finalised by the end of the year.

Such is the government’s alarm over the British obesity epidemic that the government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, has commissioned a study into the long-term trends, including the possible use of new ‘anti-obesity’ drugs that reduce the size of the human body.

Ministers are also coming under political and medical pressure to ban junk food advertising before the 9pm watershed. The public health minister, Caroline Flint, was told by health experts at a private Westminster seminar yesterday that the government would lose its reputation for international leadership against obesity if it accepted draft proposals from the broadcast regulator, Ofcom, not to impose a ban on junk food [sic] before 9pm. Ofcom said the ban would cost TV channels nearly £141m in advertising revenue.

A decision is expected by the government in the autumn.

The Food Standards Agency came out against a range of Ofcom plans yesterday and ministers are under pressure from the Labour party to back the FSA stance.

Ms Flint said yesterday that, as in the case of the tobacco advert ban on TV in the 1960s, tighter regulations on TV advertising may merely expedite a migration of advertising to other media.

‘We have to look at both sides of the coin,’ she said, adding that there were also signs that food companies were aiming at parents. She said it was possible to build a nutrient profile of food products to determine whether they should be deemed damaging to health and banned from TV or other forms of advertising.

Her department, along with Culture, Media and Sport, is leading a discussion forum between food companies and consumer groups to negotiate a tough self-regulatory regime for non-broadcast advertising.

Speaking at the seminar, which was organised by the Fabians, Ms Flint blamed the rise in obesity partly on unavoidable changes in lifestyle. She said: ‘There was a time when an eight or nine-year-old said the best present they could want is a bicycle, but now it is more likely to be a new Play Station. That is the reality’.

She said 15% of Britain’s 5 million children aged between two and 11 were obese and a similar number were overweight.

‘If we don’t do something about this we will have 1 million children obese costing the health service between £3.3bn and £3.7bn a year,’ she said.

Professor Gerard Hastings, director of the Institute for Social Marketing at Stirling University, who led the FSA review on the impact of junk food advertising told the seminar that Ofcom’s proposals were ‘pusillanimous’. He said all the evidence showed that advertising affected uptake by children and choice of product.

But a pre-9pm ban would be ‘totally disproportionate’, according to the Food Advertising Unit, which represents advertisers and food companies. The unit said advertising had ‘a modest (2%) direct effect on children’s food preferences’”.

In an atmosphere where the current Government’s authoritarian streak is beginning to stir citizens out of their torpor (having taken the freedoms they enjoy for granted for so long), the “spy in the trolley” scheme whereby our every purchase is monitored ought to engender an outcry. However, most (subscribing as they do to the fat loathing ideology) shrug it off, consoling themselves that they are not guilty of overindulgence and will therefore not be affected. Price is neatly omitted from this concept – middle-class shoppers, whose “discernment” is born of the luxury of actually having the disposable income to ponder options stand to gain most (and no doubt will feel bolstered in the knowledge of their innate superiority over the oiks). When a floret of fresh broccoli costs £1.99 and two loaves of what is nose-wrinkingly referred to as synthetic white bread by those who swear by high-fibre brown half as much, the hard-pressed customer will not hesitate for long over which to put in the basket. I am a great believer in the thin end of the wedge principle. Will the supermarkets be able to resist the temptation to sell on the information collated to insurers? Will only those who subsist on organic wholegrains qualify for free health care? Will the occasional Cadbury’s Turkish Delight prompt a rebuke in the post, an avalanche of spam in the in-box for diet pills, an automatic appointment with the GP to talk some sense into the shopper or an invitation to a re-education programme with a strict calorie-controlled lunch between lectures and compulsory sessions on the treadmill? If this appears far-fetched or pie in the sky, warning letters to the parents of overweight children are already being hawked as a palliative (see the section Remedies below).

In the same edition, Laura Barton parodied the debate in her It’s 9pm – time to reach for that hard-core snack: “We have pinpointed the problem, and the problem is this: monkey see, monkey do. Yes, it seems that the waddlesome children of this isle are incapable of watching an advert for cheesy Wotsits without responding by wolfing down a 12-bag multipack of the sock-flavoured corn snack. This calls for desperate measures. Hence, the Food Standards Agency has urged Ofcom to ban junk food advertising from our television screens until after the nine o’clock watershed to keep the wee chimps away from temptation. This will of course unleash a whole new genre of 19.01’ advertising, steeped in sex, violence and filthy language:

X-Rated KFC The colonel is a louche, Hugh Hefner-style figure, surrounded at all times by a bevy of ‘hot chicks’: Ad shows him reclining in his silk robe and drawling on about ‘secret recipes’ and his ‘Wicked Zinger Meal’, before winkingly asking one of his brood to sample his ‘family bucket’. Closing shot of colonel licking his greasy lips and uttering the maxim ‘finger-lickin’ good’ ensures product is coated in thick layer of herbs, spices, breadcrumbs and innuendo.

After Eights, After Hours The scene: suburban dinner party, shortly after the cheese course. All is progressing innocently enough until some smut-head brings out the After Eight mints. From the knowing glances exchanged, one deduces that this has become the modern equivalent of a bowl of car keys. NB, this advert will be crucial in Nestlé’s efforts to recast After Eights as the post-dinner mint choice of swingers clubs across the land.

Bondage Cheestrings What cheestrings undoubtedly lose in being processed and high in fat, they make up for in sheer versatility – hence the decision to reposition them not as a packed lunch favourite for kids, but as a kinky bedroom snack for the hungry fetishist.

McDonald’s: Late Night and Dangerous Ronald McDonald is a potty-mouthed clown armed with two deadly McFlurries and one supersize grudge. That’s right, the original Big Ron is on the trail of Morgan Spurlock; and this time it’s personal.

Werther’s originals – the horror! the horror! Small boy’s wonder at being presented with a special golden-hued toffee quickly turns to fear as he watches his grandfather becoming a fly-infested killer octopus.

Junkie Pringles Working on the popular Pringles catchphrase ‘Once you pop, you can’t stop’, Kate Moss is filmed in a variety of locations – at a recording studio, meeting nelson Mandela, leaving rehab in Arizona – singularly unable to give up her Pringles” (emphasis in original).

Sarah Boseley gave an account of the latest twist in Health charities accuse Ofcom of scare tactics (The Guardian, 17^th June 2006): “Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, was yesterday accused of using heavy-handed legal tactics in an attempt to scare off health charities which want a ban on television junk food advertising before the 9pm watershed.

The National Heart Forum (NHF), an alliance of health and consumer organisations, is bringing a judicial review of Ofcom’s refusal to have a 9pm ban as one of the specific options in its public consultation on food advertising to children.

The charity said Ofcom was threatening to invite nearly 150 other organisations to be parties to the judicial review, which would lengthen the proceedings and inflate the costs.

‘Ofcom’s response to our legal challenge is to try to scare us into abandoning our claim. It is scandalous that a national regulator should use our public money to attempt to outgun our limited charitable resources by ramping up costs and wasting time,’ said Jane Landon, deputy chief executive of the forum.

Richard Stein, partner with Leigh, Day and Co, acting for the NHF, said: ‘They are proposing to serve several files of legal papers on nearly 150 organisations, ranging from McDonald’s to the Gaelic Media Service, inviting them to participate’.

Ofcom rejected the forum’s charges, claiming the court required Ofcom to list all interested parties.

But the letter from Ofcom’s lawyers to Mr Stein, representing the forum, implies that the initiative is Ofcom’s own’.

Sean Poulter announced that Ofcom was finally showing signs of caving in (Rethink over junk food watershed, Daily Mail, 22^nd June 2006): “The television watchdog Ofcom has said it is prepared after all to consider a total ban on junk-food advertising up to the 9pm watershed.

It had previously rejected such a ban as ‘disproportionate’, saying it would cost TV companies £140million a year in lost advertising revenue.

The regulator came up with alternatives based on restricting commercials for food high in fat, salt and sugar around children’s viewing time.

However, it emerged yesterday that Ofcom will ‘welcome representations’ on the possibility of a full ban running through until 9pm.

Last week, the Food Standards Agency said this was necessary to prevent the under-15s being bombarded with commercials for unhealthy food.

Ofcom’s willingness to consult on the 9pm option followed legal action by the National heart Forum charity, an alliance of health and consumer bodies, including doctors and teachers.

It had launched a judicial review of Ofcom’s decision to refuse to consult on the extended advertising ban on unhealthy foods, but has now dropped the case.

The NHF and Ofcom are at odds over whether the watchdog has carried out a U-turn. NHF deputy chief executive Jane Landon said: ‘We are happy that Ofcom has made these significant concessions and made it unnecessary to take them to court’.

But Ofcom said the NHF legal action was always ‘unfounded, unwarranted and unnecessary’”.

The Daily Mail (6^th July 2006, unattributed) dished out more adverse publicity for the villains in Junk-food firms reject TV watershed. Well they would, wouldn’t they?: “Food manufacturers and advertisers gave their verdict yesterday on demands to ban junk-food commercials before the 9pm watershed.

And, surprise, surprise, they don’t think it’s a good thing.

For a start, they reject outright the Food Standards Agency’s definition of junk food – high in sugar, fat and salt – saying it is ‘not scientifically robust’.

Instead, they propose a compromise ban on adverts for all branded foods during programmes aimed at under-tens on terrestrial TV.

In addition, they suggest limiting all food and drink adverts to 30 seconds per hour all day on dedicated children’s channels.

The submission to the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom, which has launched a consultation exercise over the junk food issue, received short shrift from the FSA.

Richard Watts, campaign coordinator for the Children’s Food Bill, said: ‘It is very disappointing indeed that industry are so nakedly defending their own interests rather than trying to improve children’s health.

‘These proposals are so weak that they will not help one bit to defuse the time bomb of childhood obesity.

‘If this is the best they can come up with it’s time for the Government to legislate to protect children from junk-food ads before 9pm’.

The FSA’s demands for a junk-food watershed are echoed by the National Consumer Council and the National Heart Forum – a coalition of nearly 50 health and consumer groups.

Responding to the food industry’s suggestions, Jane Landon, NHF deputy chief executive, said: ‘I think it is a predictably weak proposal from interests which are working to conserve advertising freedoms rather than pleasing parents. These proposals fail to cover all children – they focus on the under-tens. They fail to cover the times when children are watching television in the largest numbers and the proposals fail to target junk food’.

Melanie Leech, director general of the Food and Drink Federation which represents manufacturers, insisted: ‘We think this is a very significant package – it is Ofcom who will decide whether it is appropriate. We think it is very significant and very good news for parents’.

The industry has also accepted a set of advert content restrictions drawn up by the Broadcasting Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP).

These include a ban on the use of celebrities and licensed characters such as Disney cartoons in adverts aimed at under-tens. It also bans promotional offers such as collectibles and giveaways in food and drink adverts aimed at under-tens.

Ofcom will consider the industry’s response and all others it receives over the summer before making an announcement in the autumn”.

The debate on advertising will inevitably be revived towards the end of the year. One positive feature is that it has addressed a factor usually neglected in the tired old regurgitation of blame and shame clichés, namely that forces beyond the individual’s capacity for self-control might actually play a role. It will certainly enhance my experience as a viewer to be spared the garish colours, gratingly cheerful and gung-ho cartoon figureheads and extra volume blaring out during the commercial break, which are a source of more than mild irritation. My son (15), by contrast, does not see any harm in the ads, that they might encourage him to try a product once, but no more than that. He has internalised the lament that adverts are often wittier than the programmes they punctuate. Perhaps the demise of Lineker’s antics will constitute an impoverishment and the old ads will live on in folk memory as objects of nostalgia and fond recollection like those for Hamlet cigars (the one I have preserved by chance on a deteriorating video tape showing a voluptuous maiden sprawled helpless over her bedspread in an antique four-poster, the silhouette of a moonlit castle discernible through her open window in the distance. A bat swoops in and transmutes into his true form, bloodsucking Dracula resplendent in his red-lined cloak, pale visage animated with anticipation. He bends to her neck, brushing the tresses aside to gain access to her artery, then hesitates, overcome with despair. We switch to his own coffin-side table to see a glass with the dentures, complete with viciously extended canines, he has forgotten to insert).

What worries me more is what the Government will resort to when the ban has failed to yield appreciable results (I am sure it will not fulfil the hopes it has been freighted down with of eliminating child obesity overnight). Will it legislate the appropriate size and shape for a human being? Will those who do not conform have their rights curtailed? Already weight is a criterion of “fitness” (a telling word) in adjudicating whether a potential foster parent is approved for adopting children or not. Will the presence of a Mars Bar in the lunchbox trigger a raid from Social Services, justifying the offspring’s being taken into care for neglect, or worse, abuse? The technology exists for our every decision to be documented and used in evidence against us. In the name of rationalisation of costs punitive moral judgements may be coupled with punitive financial ones and the ill be left to fend for themselves – they only had themselves to blame for becoming bloated, after all.

Sexism

In the British context, the Daily Mail, with its affluent middle-class constituency, is notorious for its retrograde, right-wing agenda (which nevertheless wields massive influence over a New Labour Party that quakes at the prospect of losing the Middle England vote), especially as regards sexuality and family matters, its penchant for moralising and its unconcealed enmity towards feminists, whom it caricatures as hairy-legged, strident, man-hating, Guardian-devouring termagants hell bent on cowing dissenters into submission. Saving its most fulsome praise for stay-at-home mothers who fit the archetype of demure, self-sacrificing femininity it favours, it is fond of fulminating against welfare-scrounging single mothers, the dangerous dregs leeching on the their hard-working compatriots. Within the broader category, however, two groups are particularly despised, the prolific and teenagers.

In Emily Cook’s Girls ‘maturing two years earlier than their grans’ (Daily Mail, 7^th February 2006) the “pollution” of fat is amplified by another form of “moral contamination”, early sexual activity: “Girls are reaching puberty 18 months before their mothers did and almost two years earlier than their grandmothers, research reveals.

A report blames the early onset of puberty on a range of factors including high levels of obesity, a lack of exercise and the increased number of broken homes.

Experts warn that parents and teachers need to be prepared for the consequences of children starting adolescence earlier than ever before.

Psychologist Dr Aric Sigman focused on the onset of puberty among three generations of females across Britain. He found that girls currently start puberty at an average age of 10.25 years, while their mothers began at 11.75 years and their grandmothers at 12 years.

The report supports a raft of research into what is commonly termed as ‘precocious puberty’.

A study by scientists in Bristol in 2000 suggested that one girl in six was reaching puberty before the age of eight compared with one in 14 boys showing the same signs.

Dr Sigman’s report indicates that as new generations of girls become successively heavier they are reaching puberty earlier.

It is suspected that the extra body fat causes an increase in levels of the hormone leptin, which is thought to be involved in triggering puberty.

The study found that the youngest generation of daughters had dramatically different eating patterns to that of their mothers and grandmothers.

Today’s pre-teenage girls consume far more sweets and junk food and have a much lower intake of fresh fruit and vegetables than their mothers and grandmothers.

In contrast, grandmothers and mothers were much more likely to eat homecooked [sic] foods than the young generation of granddaughters.

Coming from a world of post-war rationing, grandmothers were also less likely to have fridges. In any case, recreational food was not so widely available.

There were also far fewer late-night takeaways when grandmothers were young.

The survey also found big differences between the generations in their choice of transport.

While modern-day daughters rely most heavily on cars, their grandmothers were much more likely to travel on foot or by bicycle.

Exercise has a direct correlation with obesity and many of today’s youngsters are active for only 20 minutes a day.

Television was not available to grandmothers in pre-pubescent years and was rationed to small amounts of viewing in the case of mothers. But many modern children have unlimited access to TV and opt for a ‘couch potato’ lifestyle.

Computer games for both older generations were non-existent and grandmothers and mothers were more likely to visit the cinema once or twice a week as a main form of entertainment.

Stressful home lives – including divorce and a lack of positive and supportive family relationships – are also linked to early puberty in girls.

Family environments which appear less stable are thought to trigger an evolutionary mechanism in girls causing them to reach puberty earlier.

Dr Sigman studied a sample of 60 women comprised of multi-generational family units, each with a daughter aged 16 to 20, a mother aged between 40 and 50 and a grandmother aged 65 to 75.

The research – commissioned by skincare firm Clearasil – revealed a significant difference between the age at which the current generation of girls start menstruating compared with their mothers and grandmothers”.

The good doctor would appear to scan the newspaper columns as avidly as myself, advancing the tabloid arguments as he does (albeit without the requisite degree of scepticism), although his title lends them a sheen of academic authority.

This reasonably neutral summary of the research was followed by a plaintive article penned by Sigman himself (Daily Mail, 8^th February 2006), How we’re (literally) sexualising young girls: “We continually hear it said that ‘children are growing up too fast nowadays’. Now it seems this is more than just a cliché, it is a scientific truth with profound consequences for social stability and the health of future generations.

New research across Britain has found that girls are now reaching puberty much earlier than in the past. Over just three generations, the average age at which girls sexually mature has fallen by up to two years”.

It provided him with a platform to pontificate about how our country is going to the dogs: “How has this come about? I believe it owes a very great deal to the social environment of modern Britain, where children’s sedentary lives are dominated by television, where aggressively sexual imagery is pervasive, where family structures are breaking down, and where stress and depression are widespread.

The idea that social and mental factors could play a part in altering such fundamental aspects of human physiology used to be dismissed by scientists. But an increasing amount of evidence points to the fallacy of this conviction.

We know now, for instance, that emotions can have a deep effect on the immune system, something that would have been a heresy only a few decades ago.

In the same way, the earlier onset of puberty may now be linked to the nature of our increasingly fragmented and inactive society.

One of the most obvious causes is the massive rise in obesity in recent years. Britain is now Europe’s fattest country, with more than half of the population defined as overweight or obese.

Worryingly, obesity in British children is rising twice as quickly as in adults, largely as a result of lack of exercise and a change in eating habits away from home-cooked meals and towards junk food.

A girl’s bodyweight is one of the best predictors of when her first period will arrive, and as new generations of girls become successively heavier, so they are reaching puberty earlier.

This may be because extra weight causes an increase in the hormone leptin, which is manufactured by fat cells and is thought to be involved in triggering puberty.

How? Well, a key ingredient of this process may be that, when a girl puts on weight, a signal is sent to her brain that she now has enough body fuel to be able to reproduce.

So just as girls who have to remain thin for career reasons – such as ballet dancers and athletes – experience a delay in the onset of puberty, so those who are overweight see adolescence arrive earlier.

Part of the reason for our mounting epidemic of obesity is the all-pervasive influence of television on the lives of children.

In modern Britain, the TV is far more than just a piece of furniture or a piece of entertainment. It is a huge force in almost every family, dominating the domestic environment, acting as an electronic babysitter and shaping behaviour.

More than half of three-year-olds have TV sets in their bedrooms, while by the age of six the average child will have spent a full year of 24 hour days in front of the screen.

Apart from giving rise to obesity, this helps to promote early puberty in other ways. One is through the relentless exposure to sexual imagery. Scientific research has shown that when adults watch sexual material on the screen, hormones are released into the body.

There is no reason to believe the same is not true of children and that these hormones help hasten the onset of adolescence.

But even without the sexual content, excessive viewing is harmful to children because the light and radiation of the screen prevent the production of a hormone called melatonin, which is believed to be an important inhibitor of the onset of puberty.

In other words, TV is not just a medium for negative images; it can also have direct biological consequences.

Along with pop videos and magazines, television is also part of an arsenal of media influences that have encouraged a loss of innocence in children.

Publications aimed at pre-teen girls now talk openly about sexual positions and oral sex, while the pop scene is filled with gyrating exhibitionist stars and explicit lyrics.

It is hardly surprising, as a result, that so many children are prematurely sexualised, both mentally and physically.

The instability of modern British family life is another factor in early onset puberty.

We have the highest rates of divorce, lone parenthood, relationship breakdown and teenage pregnancy in Europe, which means record numbers of girls are growing up in fractured, conflicting environments. And this may affect puberty for girls in two ways.

The first occurs where the biological father has left the house, and his place is taken by a stepfather – or a series of temporary partners.

These new masculine arrivals in the house produce new and unfamiliar pheromones – the hormones that encourage sexual attraction between humans – and this is believed to hasten the arrival of puberty in young girls who are exposed to them.

The second happens where divorce and relationship breakdown lead to a mood of instability and stress in the home. Studies have shown that modern British women have the highest levels of clinical depression in Europe and this, again, may be contributing to the decline in the age of puberty.

A chaotic or unhappy family life is believed to trigger an evolutionary mechanism in girls, whereby their bodies feel a biological imperative to reproduce.

This can be traced back to the anxious climate of primitive times, where life expectancy was far shorter because of the savagery of Nature, so girls would want more babies to ensure the survival of some of their children.

What’s more, the falling age of maturity worsens the very problems that helped to cause it. One study of girls aged six to 11 has shown that those who reached puberty early were more depressed, aggressive, socially withdrawn and likely to suffer difficulties in sleeping.

Another investigation found that earlier menstruation was linked to drinking, smoking, drug addiction, low self-esteem and suicide attempts.

It has also been found that the earlier a child reaches puberty, the earlier they are likely to have sex. The result? Britain has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Western Europe, twice that of Germany and three times that of France.

And promiscuity is rampant – a quarter of sexually active 13-year-olds have had four or more sexual partners”.

Hillel Schwartz’s brilliant cultural history of fat, Never Satisfied puts the psychologist’s rantings into perspective: “Since the late 19^th century, especially for females of the working class, average age at menarche had been declining – from 14.2 years in the 1870s to 12.8 years in the 1960s. Since the percentage of body fat and the gross body weight may very well be key triggers for menstruation, an earlier age at menarche could be attributed in part to long-term trends in average weight and average fatness among women. The greater the weight and the more fat, Stanley Garn suggested in 1959, the earlier the age of physical maturity and menarche” (New York, Doubleday, 1986, p294). The body, both male and female, is geared for reproduction blithely ignoring the distaste the sprouting of breasts might precipitate in prudes and puritans. That girls may become withdrawn probably has more to do with their being made to feel abnormal and embarrassed that they have ripened slightly sooner than their classmates (besides, in case he hadn’t noticed, our culture has embraced a raging hormones explanation for adolescent moodiness, not to mention the recognised syndrome of pre-menstrual tension, that classifies sulking in the bedroom listening to the CD collection at full volume as a perfectly acceptable, transitory phenomenon). Sigman resorts to citing biological imperatives (in this instance pheromones) selectively, where he believes it strengthens his hand in dressing up his snobbery about single mothers in pseudo-scientific garb. We can’t change nature, he suggests, no amount of social interference or conditioning will suffice (although his underlying agenda of re-establishing the largely defunct nuclear family shines through). His real problem is with unregulated female sexual activity, the spectre of promiscuity haunts him, without the band of gold and the blessing of the church should a woman bestow her favours. Perhaps he would like the practice of locking single mothers in asylums (out of sight, driven out of mind) to be re-instigated. If he is worried about bastard brats running wild through the streets, smashing windows and letting down tyres maybe he should entertain the notion of teaching boys about contraception instead of putting the onus on girls (of course this would be far too radical for someone who sets a premium on abstinence). No responsibility is placed on boys here. Sigman’s nostalgia is misplaced. Turning back the clock is neither feasible nor desirable, even if it were “only” to entail smashing all the TV sets, computers, video consoles and the (in his eyes) misnamed joy sticks along with the most malevolent seducers of all, the refrigerators. Or scrapping all cars. Nothing about making amenities more affordable (his lycra-leotard-swathed wife wouldn’t want to rub shoulders with the riff-raff in her exclusive gym no doubt) or convincing everyone that crime rates are not so high that they can’t venture outside. Perhaps he would like to force the lower orders to toil in the fields again. Perhaps he would like to abolish factories and offices (he might win a few supporters there). Perhaps he would like to starve girls deliberately and callously to avert the calamity he has forecast. As if parents were impervious to the hysterical tripe spewed out day after day by the media about fat. Perhaps he would like to issue chastity belts to all girls when they bleed for the first time. Or sterilise those who come from families on benefits.

Is it not sad when on one of the extremely rare occasions when fat is linked with sex in the mainstream media the message conveyed is entirely negative? For once we see an admission that you do not have to boast of a catwalk model’s wasted physique to copulate, yet we are not permitted a moment’s triumph in the “I told you so” mode.

Remedies

Having devoted so much journalistic energy to whipping parents up into a froth, the newspapers were as eager to cover the solutions put forward.

Jonathan Owen evoked the old-fashioned idyll of the aproned housewife doling out potatoes and Yorkshire puddings whilst Father carved the roast beef in Family meals keep children fit and happy, study shows (The Independent on Sunday, 5^th March 2006): “Children who eat with their families rather than alone in front of the television are more likely to enjoy a healthy diet and be well adjusted, according to new research.

This comes at a time when momentum is growing for healthier foods, with reports this week of a dramatic slump in fast-food sales amid growing concerns about obesity, now said to affect one in seven children.

Eating habits tend to deteriorate when children hit adolescence, with regular mealtimes often suffering. Researchers point out that family mealtimes are a necessity and play an important part in keeping children healthy and happy.

According to Mary McLeod, chief executive of the National Family and Parenting Institute, the very act of eating together is therapeutic for families. ‘We’ve worked with hundreds of parents from across the UK,’ she said, ‘and they tell us how important it is to cook and have more meals together as a family and to start that with their children at an early age. Shared family time is the key to successful relationships, and mealtimes are a big part of this’.

According to the research, published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, family mealtimes develop and reinforce regular eating habits, and help reduce the risks of teenagers turning to cigarettes, alcohol and drugs, as well as helping to improve school performance.

Families that eat together regularly tend to have a healthier diet. They are more likely to eat fruit and vegetables rather than fry-ups and fizzy drinks.

The Consumer Attitudes to Food survey of 3,000 Britons paints a picture of rising consumption of fresh produce, more home cooking and a return to family meals.

However, many families do not have time to cook complex meals, and many parents have limited food-preparation skills. The research suggests cookery lessons should be given for families who need help to learn to cook and eat together”.

In the linked full-page article, Jonathan Thompson drew the comparison between then and now: “As recently as a generation ago, British families sat together for a meal nearly every day, but today a quarter of us don’t even have a dining table. Only 12 per cent of people now say that they cook meals from scratch, down from 39 per cent just 10 years ago. Today, families spend an average of just 19 minutes preparing meals. A decade ago, this was over a third longer”.

Owen pursued the issue (The Independent had launched a campaign to re-introduce Sunday lunch) in It’s official: shared mealtimes mean healthier, happier families (The Independent, 16^th April 2006): “Children and parents are united in their appreciation of the benefits of eating together and value the intimacy that this brings, according to new research.

In the study, based on surveys of more than 900 families, researchers found that parents place greatest importance on eating together, with younger children most likely to agree with them. Teenagers still prove reluctant converts, though, becoming less inclined to prioritise the family meal as they get older, and find the lure of the TV dinner more appealing. Adolescents are not known for making regular appearances at the family dining table but experts point out that family mealtimes are a necessity and should not be viewed as an additional bonus, as they help to keep families healthy and harmonious.

The study, by the University of Minnesota (…) concludes: ‘Family meals may be a useful mechanism for enhancing family togetherness and communication and for role modelling behaviours that parents would like their children to emulate’.

This is the latest addition to a growing body of evidence supporting the health and social benefits of families cooking and eating together, with good eating habits starting at a young age.

Concerns remain over children falling victim to a fast-food culture, with more than half a million British schoolchildren obese, according to a study by the International Obesity Task Force”.

Joanna Blythman’s Bad Food Britain functions as a handy compendium of contemporary food-related woes (her previous volume, Shopped: The Shocking Power of British Supermarkets, established her credentials as a pugnacious adversary of the major retail chains) seen through the prism of the press (with a few web-published reports thrown in for good measure). Beyond the clippings, which she takes as gospel, little effort is made to look beyond the surface. Her proselytising zeal to assimilate everyone to the “proper” middle-class vantage point often leads her astray, blinding her to the crueller realities of the less than comfortably off.

Her tuppence worth on the topic of home-cooking exhibits the traditional strengths and weaknesses of journalism (strengths in terms of the drive to bring injustices to light thereby rooting them out in the gut-punch prose of the committed, weaknesses in terms of a simplistic, unreflective approach void of historical and intellectual depth): “Meanwhile in Britain, the no-time-to-cook culture continues to grow, feeding off the deeply-rooted British idea that food is of trivial importance in the great span of things, and also picking up more modern justification along the way by wrapping itself in the language of feminism. All over the world, since time immemorial, women have taken responsibility for domestic cooking. As late as the 1950s, the preparation of food at home by women was not only expected, but encouraged – the presumption being that women did not work” (Blythman, op. cit., p71).

The cynical (and parasitical) appropriation of slogans by processed food manufacturers is a separate issue from the emancipatory agenda of feminism. Big businesses couldn’t care less about women’s liberation unless it happens to open up new market niches and feminist-bashing is not going to rectify that. Throughout Blythman takes it for granted that women will do the shopping and make the dinner. It would never cross her mind that men might be encouraged to do their share, nor does she ever question the fairness of this unequal division of labour and never examines the issue of non-remuneration and lack of status of the domestic labour. The latter is not acknowledged as real work by society as a whole and it is regarded as menial as well as mind-numbingly boring (which is precisely why men give it such a wide berth). It would be more logical to criticise the food manufacturers for serving us up an empty substitute for liberation on a plate as opposed to genuine freedom, instead of adopting an equivocating tone that panders to the “back-to-the-kitchen” camp. In her fervour to encumber women with the duty of bearing the burden of peeling, chopping, boiling and grilling once again she does not balk at moral blackmail: if you don’t give up your job and chuck out the microwave the health of your children will suffer.

As usual we imported the cancer within from the other side of the Pond: “By the late 1960s, with the emergence of the Women’s Liberation Movement, the image of the contented housewife happily cooking at home while tending to children and polishing floors had come under attack. The domestic arena had become a political one, a key contested area in the battle between the sexes. Viewed together with ‘housework’, cooking was seen as deeply politically incorrect. Once again, the critique of cooking originated, not in Europe, but in the United States. ‘Women have been brainwashed more than even we can imagine,’ wrote Pat Mainardi of Redstockings, an influential New York women’s liberation group. ‘Men have no such conditioning. They recognise the essential fact of housework right from the beginning. Which is that it stinks’. No distinction was drawn between cooking a meal or [sic] cleaning up a baby’s vomit. Ms Mainardi’s list of ‘dirty chores’ began with ‘buying groceries, carting them home and putting them away, cooking meals and washing pans and pots’. Another feminist collective denounced cooking as something that not only exhausted a woman but which tended to ‘shackle her time, keeping her from more stimulating endeavours’. The message was loud and clear: Cooking is demeaning and oppressive, so ditch it as soon as you can.

Food manufacturers are always keen to cash in on what the industry refers to as ‘lifestyle trends’. By the end of the 1960s, a large number of short-cut convenience foods were already on the British shopping list” (Blythman, op. cit., p72).

In this passage the Ms is intended as a pejorative.

We should take a leaf out of the book of our neighbours across another stretch of water, namely the Channel: “A 2002 report which looked at how amenable or otherwise various European countries were to increased ‘penetration’ of convenience foods, identified Britain as the country offering the richest pickings for food processors. Britain, it pointed out, was the country where traditional eating habits were the most eroded; this was a situation which it attributed to the changing role of women. ‘Working women, particularly full-time workers, have less time and inclination for preparing family meals; additional incomes also make more money available for spending on convenience foods, such as ready meals, or on takeaways and meals out.

You can almost hear the food industry licking its lips. Its legions of supermarket pundits, retail analysts and new-product developers have all taken up with gusto the idea of the no-cook consumer, quickly coining the term ‘cash rich, time poor shopper’, a stereotype that fits the industry’s purpose rather well.

Contrary to urban myth, longer working hours do not seem to be the main factor behind Britain’s perceived time shortage for cooking. Official data released in 2004 showed that the average length of the working week in Britain for all occupations, both full and part time, fell to 31.8 hours in July 2004 – the lowest on record. So it is not so much that Britons do not have the time to cook, than that they no longer see cooking as a good use of their time. Yet food processors and retailers continue to appeal to consumers who like to think they belong to this new ‘cash rich, time poor’ breed” (Blythman, op. cit., pp76-7).

Interestingly enough, statistical surveys comparing EU Member States indicate that the UK population work the longest hours in Europe. Blythman’s diatribe says nothing about the possibility of people holding down more than one full or part time job to make ends meet, nor does it talk about how commuting times are on the increase as roads become more congested and trains overcrowded and thus does not offer a true reflection of the total number of hours people spend out of the house in conjunction with work (besides, what are perceived as “demands on time” may include leisure activities, such as not missing one’s favourite programme). Moreover it is precisely the domestic duties, such as picking the children up from school, that make serious inroads into women’s time regardless of whether they are the careerists so beloved of anti-feminist detractors and yet, as mentioned above, these forms of labour are not counted as work because there is no formalised employment relationship. Likewise the time lost by the woman (let’s agree that because of the sheer drudgery involved the gender of the aisle-perusing bargain chaser is feminine) making the long trek to the supermarket and queuing at the checkout has been overlooked, the current fashion in urban design dumping huge retail parks and hypermarkets on the fringes of cities.

Nor does the following ring true for the flesh and blood women I know: “Like the archetypical forgetful husband, who dashes out guiltily to luxurious shops to buy a hasty, badly-chosen and expensive present for his largely ignored wife, many working women in Britain now dash out to the supermarket, in search of products that look as though they approximate to an idea of likeable, edible food. Indeed, in the age of the ‘cash rich, time poor’ shopper, not having time to cook has become a sign of status. If you do still cook on a humdrum daily basis, you risk being seen as less of an achiever than those who don’t – by implication, your time should be taken up with something more worthwhile and improving than cooking” (Blythman, op. cit., p78).

The average working-class woman is hardly going to tear her hair out over whether she will lose face if she throws a few fish fingers in the frying pan. The cause for concern in relation to her (which bears repetition given how deeply entrenched the prejudice about working class women as lazy, stupid and incompetent as parents has become) is the chronic lack of fresh fruit and vegetables that won’t break the bank coupled with the rock bottom prices for the contents of the freezer chests. If these mothers really believed that they were actively maltreating their children by feeding them what is after all sold as nutritious they would stop.

Blythman castigates us for our capitulation to the blandishments of the food barons: “Britain has swung so far away from the idea that cooking is a basic, nourishing life skill, that to champion it locates you on the margins of political life and culture, like an eccentric flat-Earther or incurable romantic. You might as well advise women to abandon their washing machines and start doing their laundry on stones in the river.

The more you earn in Britain, the more aspiring and ambitious you are, the more you are under pressure not to cook as this may lead you to put your success under stress” (Blythman, op. cit., pp79-80).

She gazes towards the Continent, eyes brimful of adoration: “Unlike Europe, where women clearly think they can cook and still be considered as rounded, successful people who are effective I other spheres of their life, British women who see cooking as a priority for health, well-being and a life-enriching pleasure, risk being seen as being in the slow lane of modern life, not using their intellect to its fullest potential” (Blythman, op. cit., p80).

Paradoxically, heeding the feminist preachers has only lumbered women with more stress (perish the thought that the man of the house might have to perforate the film of the part-boiled rice and curry trays and slide them into the oven): “In Britain, unlike the rest of Europe, feminist sisterhood has proven spectacularly bad for the cause of good food, yet perversely, it does not appear to have liberated women from their obligation to feed others. An increasing number of men do take some responsibility for cooking as more women now work than before. The UK has the third highest rate of female employment in Europe with a record 70 per cent of women at work, but the stereotypical image of a woman at the kitchen sink still fits British contemporary life. Although less cooking is going on in British households, women still take the responsibility for seeing that everyone has something to eat. One survey found that in 61 per cent of British households, women do all or most of the cooking that takes place. They may not necessarily be cooking from scratch, but women still have to solve the daily puzzle of what everyone is going to eat, even though a ‘no-cook’ culture makes it possible for everyone to eat something different. If Mum doesn’t actually cook the dinner, just buy it, then there is no need for everyone to eat the same thing. Consequently, the erstwhile ‘cook’ in the house is now expected to plan purchases to reflect everyone’s likes and dislikes; 43 per cent of British mothers now make up to three different meals each night, presumably to cater for members of the household unwilling to eat the same thing (…) Instead of settling on one communal meal that everyone can eat – albeit in relays – women now have to produce a different meal for everybody.

This task is supposedly made easier by the availability of ready meals or flexible food items that can be out together allowing women to serve up easily-made dishes tailored to each individual’s picky tastes. In reality, deciding what everyone is going to eat each night may be more stressful than simply cooking a single straightforward communal meal from scratch. This is a new pressure on women that their female forebears who followed a cyclical repertoire (…) never had” (Blythman, op. cit., pp80-83).

I leave it to Wendy Shanker to sum up for the case against Blythman: “My favourite kind of ironic blame goes to those who blame fat on the feminist movement. See, with women in the workforce, we’re not around to make good, healthy foods for our families or supervise what our kids are stuffing in their mouths. Let’s not look for compromises, like Dad learning how to make a meal or kids learning how to cook. C’mon America, get those women back in the kitchen where they belong! In a recent study, some economists suggested that work in general makes us fat: ‘As women devoted more time to paid work, the theory goes, they had less time for cooking, a burden that the men in their lives (who typically spend more time at their jobs) presumably had little time or interest in assuming. Fast-food restaurants – offering cheap, convenient meals dense with fat and calories – rushed in to fill the vacuum’. In actuality, moms are doing a better job of mothering than ever before, according to the New York Times. ‘Mothers today spend as much if not more time with their children than they did in 1965, even though the percentage of mothers who work rose from 35 percent to 71 percent (How do they do it? Answer: less sleep, less housework, more time together when they’re at home)’.

We blame our mothers or fathers or a life event that caused us some emotional damage. We blame stress and jobs and money and TV and the guy who was mean to us in eleventh grade and the girl who was rude to us at summer camp and the boss who just won’t give us any respect. We blame the delicious taste of chocolate. Some of us stick with addiction models, or blame sugar, or carbs, or potatoes, blood types, or God knows what else.

And, of course, we blame our awful, rotten, no-good, very bad selves most of all.

(…) But blame is just blame. It’s finger-pointing. It doesn’t accomplish much; blame just sells magazines and starts lawsuits” (Wendy Shanker, The Fat Girl’s Guide to Life, New York, Bloomsbury, 2004, pp108-9).

By way of a coda I include Ready-meal mums who never start from scratch (Daily Mail, 19^th June 2006, unattributed), which while furnishing ammunition for Blythman also manifests the tendency to pile “ineptitude” upon “ineptitude” (or “pollution” on “pollution” as remarked upon previously): “Almost three-quarters of mothers give their children ready meals or takeaways more than three times a week, research revealed yesterday.

The study also found 57 per cent failed to serve fresh vegetables with the evening meal at least four times a week.

But, as an indication of how eating habits have changed within a generation, 80 per cent of those questioned said their mothers had fed them vegetables this often.

The survey of more than 1,000 mothers found three-quarters never made an evening meal from scratch.

But 87 per cent said their mothers used to make them supper from raw ingredients at least five days a week.

And just 18 per cent said that, as children, they were fed frozen or tinned foods or fish and chips more than three times a week.

Today, almost half of mothers admit to skipping meals because they get home too late, according to the survey for Health Supplements Information Service.

A similar amount waited until the weekend to get eight hours’ sleep, while 53 per cent said they drank more than 14 units of alcohol in an average week”.

David Brindle and Jacqueline Maley announced that the all-purpose, flavour of the month Jamie Oliver was to be recruited to sort out our eating habits at home as well as at school in Jamie Oliver joins campaign for family meals (The Guardian, 27^th June 2006): “The Department of Health is negotiating with Sainsbury’s about a joint campaign, to be fronted by the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, to encourage families to eat together more often as a key means of improving the nation’s diet.

The move would mark a controversial departure for government public health campaigns in its tie-up with a commercial brand. A report commissioned by the health department and published yesterday argues that such partnerships should be encouraged, provided appropriate ethical guidelines are put in place.

It comes as research shows that over the past year spending on frozen foods had fallen almost 3%, with sales of frozen ready meals and meat products – including the Turkey Twizzlers ridiculed by Oliver during his influential TV series on school meals – down more than 8%.

The family meal has been highlighted as a prominent factor in social cohesion, as well as nutritional wellbeing. Surveys suggest that as few as three in 10 families now sit down to eat together more than once a week, with most of those watching the television at the same time. This year, the dining table was dropped from the official basket of goods said to reflect the country’s buying habits”.

Jamie Oliver’s irrepressible chirpiness might stave off the suspicion that we are to have yet another moral sermon rammed down our throats, but the point about the consequences of living in a celebrity-oriented television age is accurate enough: “Sainsbury’s pays the TV chef an estimated £1m a year to star in its advertisements. The proposed relationship reflects a growing trend for food companies to get involved in the promotion of healthy living.

Some public health campaigners may question whether the health department is allowing its messages to be hijacked by commercial interests. But Jeff French, co-author of yesterday’s report on use of social marketing techniques in public health work, said: ‘They can be part of the problem, but there is no solution that doesn’t involve them…in terms of reach’”.

Julie Burchill, in Just don’t make a meal of it (The Guardian, 7^th September 2002, quoted in extenso and disputed by Blythman), shatters the cosy image of a family gathered to eat: “He who eats on the hoof is a fleet-footed, self-reliant citizen, refusing to stuff when he’s not hungry or deny himself when he is. He does not seek the stultifying comfort of fellow cud-chewers (there’s something irretrievably beast-like about eating in company at prescribed times, like piggies at an elevated trough), but sees his body as a mere engine to power his immortal soul. He seeks neither the strong man of fascism nor the matriarch of the kitchen to tell him what to do. What’s so wrong with our kiddies growing up like that?

Something weird is going on in households where too much emphasis is placed on eating together; all sorts of power games and control freakery, a breeding ground for anorexia and bulimia as teenagers seek to establish control over their bodies. The sort of man who demands that his daughters, especially, sit down to eat whether they want to or not strikes me as the sort of patriarchal perv who will also seek to control their dress, dating habits and, eventually, sex lives – probably because he wants to have sex with them himself. The man who insists that his home is his castle often has secret dreams in which it doubles as his harem.

Paradoxically, the home that houses the dreaded "latchkey" child and two selfishly working parents often turns out to be a relaxed, loving unit wherein a family seeks to create a comfortable lifestyle by spending quality rather than quantity time together – I know because I was that child, and my "lucky" friends with traditional homes regularly fled the stifling hothouses in order to hang out and eat Vesta paella in front of Crossroads with me. In the brilliant film Meet The Parents, Greg Focker appals his girlfriend’s parents, on first sitting down for Thanksgiving dinner with them, by saying that a family dinner for him has always meant a group of people fighting over a Chinese takeaway in the kitchen. Yet this grotesque image turns out to be a paradise lost as the weekend progresses, and family meals in the parents’ household turn out to be teeth-clenching tests of nerve and pass-the-pepper power-plays.

I can’t help thinking, as someone from a home where love was everything and food just fuel, that far from symbolising happy families, too much emphasis on shared meals indicates a sterile, stilted environment where food is dished up in place of true affection. Either that, or the attempt to "re-create" a happy family through the alchemy of cooking – all the smells and bells that cover up the absence of loved ones”.

Jill Parkin, in Stomach-churning gossip about the school loos. Slang that’s, like, totally infuriating. Oh, the joys (and, yes, benefits) of family mealtimes (Daily Mail, 29^th June 2006), sings the praises of the communal repast: “Firstly, family meals improve communication between generations. They provide a chance to find out what is going on in your children’s lives, assuming you can understand the uptalk (that infuriating sing-song speech pattern with a rising inflexion at the end of every sentence), the frequent use of the word ‘like’ (as in ‘I was like, ‘What planet is he on?’), and their absolute belief that clear speech is, like, uncool.

It is worth listening to your children over dinner because, with time to talk, no television and a natural speed limit on eating, you can discover if they are being bullied (we did), offered drugs or running the school dope market themselves”.

Without such rituals, bonds can apparently not be consolidated: “It’s not a case of setting up the family against the world, but of a child having an idea of where they come from. Without family meals, other forces, such as television, console games, music with God-knows-what lyrics, chatrooms and celebrity magazines, will fill the gap. They will influence your child more than you”.

Combating obesity is yet again proffered as the primary advantage: “Another advantage of family meals is that the food is better. How many adults actually want to eat that processed, shaped fat that passes for children’s fare? I don’t. You know your children need more than the snack or three you’d grab from the fridge during the evening if you were on your own. Eating together means everyone has a proper meal, rather than some highly salted and sugared pap that slides down without being noticed until it settles around the waistband.

The children also become interested in real food: the sort that doesn’t make them fat. This might make them want to cook, and what they cook they’ll eat”.

Maxine Frith, in Warning: campaigns to promote health are a waste of money (The Independent, 18^th April 2006), queried the efficacy of posters and TV ads (a by-product of gesture politics – extra money poured into the NHS risks going unnoticed as it is swallowed up in the budgetary black hole, so something more tangible if not spectacular is called for to appease disgruntled voters): “Multi-million pound health promotion campaigns by the Government are a waste of money and do not change people’s behaviour, according to nurses.

Funds would be better spent on treating patients and targeting the most at-risk groups rather than running high-profile advertising pushes, they say. The Royal College of Nursing is to debate the issue at its annual conference next week.

The Department of Health has spent millions on advertising campaigns to encourage people to stop smoking, eat fruit and vegetables, and practice safer sex over the past five years.

But a resolution tabled by the health visitors and public health forum of the RCN, entitled ‘Getting it wrong?’, suggests that the money has been wasted.

The resolution calls on the conference to discuss ‘whether resources allocated to some health-care promotion campaigns could be better used in providing direct care to patients’.

The Government spent £50m on a recent poster campaign about HIV and Aids, but, according to the RCN resolution, has ‘demonstrated limited evidence of success’.

Despite the high profile of the campaign, UK cases of HIV rose by 50 per cent between 2000 and 2004 and the number of new diagnoses among heterosexuals now outstrips homosexual transmissions.

Cases of sexually transmitted infections such as chlamydia, gonorrhoea and herpes have also continued to rise, particularly among young people.

More than £30m will be spent this year alone on providing free fruit in schools, in addition to £700,000 in 2003 to a campaign encouraging people to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day. Despite this, consumption of healthy food has not increased dramatically, with only 18 per cent of women in the most deprived areas of the UK eating the required five a day”.

The pragmatic solution advocated (motivated by a desire to put patients first) contained the germ of an idea later picked up on by a Government in search of inspiration, the so-called “fat tax”: “Nurses are set to debate whether expensive promotional campaigns should be scrapped in favour of passing the financial cost on to companies responsible for specific health problems, such as food makers, to inform consumers”.

Apart from the complete ineptitude of my initial sexual encounters on a purely technical plane, I would never have summoned the courage to ask my boyfriend to take the trouble to think beyond penetration and manic pumping as I lay inert and clenching my teeth in my unlubricated state (the fire in my belly raging unsatisfied I convinced myself that the orgasm remained elusive because I had not slept with Mr Right yet and so was propelled to seek him out). Contraception was confined to premature withdrawal (better than the empty crisp packets some youngsters were rumoured to have employed to save a few pence on condoms). Sex education classes did not begin auspiciously, with a large wall chart depicting a woman whose lower torso had been dissected to expose her internal reproductive organs in full stomach-churning colour and the religious education teacher (a spinster of the stern variety of whom we uncharitably assumed that her only acquaintance with a penis had been with the identical chart for the male system) enquiring whether we knew what a prostitute was. The clitoris was never mentioned. I certainly didn’t know I had one, although I had noticed in bed at night that if I lay on my stomach and pressed my abdomen into the mattress after some exertion a pleasurable sensation ensued. The first step towards tackling STDs is to take as much of the shyness and giggle-stifling mortification out of sex. A residual awkwardness perhaps cannot be avoided until the lessons that come with experience have been learned. Girls should certainly be emboldened to show assertiveness (although the fashion for rings proclaiming the intention to “stay pure” until marriage does not augur well in terms of the likelihood of greater open-mindedness) and boys to take the initiative over wearing condoms. I had certainly never heard of chlamydia, and AIDS/HIV dimly impinged on my consciousness as a result of the Conservative Government’s brochure (although it was immediately discredited in my eyes because of its source, along the lines of typical Tory scare-mongering tactics and proclivity for looking down its nose at the gay community).

The response to the various efforts to persuade smokers to give up is instructive. The standard Government health warning has expanded to cover most of the packet and X-ray images of tumours considered as a non-text-based deterrent. My friend Lisa is highly intelligent and more than aware of the long-term risks, yet she cannot get through the day without lighting up. Whenever she fishes her ciggies out of her handbag I am reminded of how adept we are at denial (the same applies to me with respect to chocolate, I am not staking out a claim to the moral high ground), how ingenious we are when unwelcome and uncomfortable information has to be suppressed. Her Marlboro packet is neatly slotted into an attractive silver holder, purchased in Italy, which conveniently hides the dire warnings about fertility, heart disease and the like. I expect that soon I can look forward to splashing out on a similar accessory for my 100g Cadbury’s Old Jamaica.

Two of the Government-funded anti-smoking slots of late stick in my mind, however. One comprised of the simple image of a cigarette in an ashtray oozing a thick gloop of fat instead of smoke with the message that every puff pumped the revolting substance into the arteries (this apparently really hit home, prompting more smokers to contact the helpline staff than any other), the other (which moved me to tears) consisted of a brief interview with a middle-aged man, oxygen delivery tubes below his nostrils, struggling for the breath to voice his determination to stay alive long enough to see his daughter again at Christmas. Beyond his obvious love for her what I found utterly devastating was the cruel limit on his ambitions the disease imposed, the stark narrowing of horizons that focused his energies completely on the will to say goodbye. When he had finished the screen went black and a caption told the viewer that he had died two weeks later before she arrived. What both have in common is the conviction that haranguing is the preserve of those who want to feel better about themselves and that the bare facts are eloquent enough.

In the search for a quick fix cure to child obesity, the Government’s preferred method has been to target schools, as Daniel Boffey divulged in Must eat better (The Mail on Sunday, 23^rd April 2006): “There was a time when children just had to worry about how well they were doing in maths and English when they took home school reports.

But now they face a dressing-down from parents if they’ve been performing badly with their diet.

Hundreds of pupils at a school in Lancashire are having what they choose for their dinner recorded by a sophisticated computer system – and a summary of their intake will be included in their end-of-year report.

Heywood Community High School in Rochdale has spent £19,000 on the canteen payment system, which uses a biometric thumb-print scanner to identify pupils and then files a record of their choice of food.

Deputy head David Yates said: ‘When a child says, ‘I spent that £1.50 you gave me on a salad,’ it is good for parents to know if that is true or whether their son or daughter has been eating chips for months’.

He added: ‘We want school reports to include a full nutritional breakdown. Some people have said it is like big brother, but so far parents have been very supportive’.

The school, which has 650 pupils, is the first in Britain to adopt the system.

It also allows teachers to identify pupils who skip lunch or consistently choose less healthy options. And staff can also pinpoint those with the healthiest diets and award them prizes.

Civil rights group Liberty yesterday condemned the idea, saying it made children feel like criminals. ‘There is too much information being collected on our children instead of just concentrating on their education,’ said a spokesman.

Mr Yates claims the new system builds on progress made by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver in promoting healthier school meals.

‘We can tell parents if there is a problem,’ he said. ‘One girl had been missing meals because she felt she was overweight. The system spotted the problem and we were able to talk to her about it.

‘There are also cases where children suddenly stop eating and it turns out that their families are having money problems. We notice that and can help the child’.

The technology was designed by Nationwide Retail Systems, of Barnsley, South Yorkshire. It says that several schools are now installing it”.

My sympathies lie with Liberty. We are now guilty until proven innocent (children are sly and mendacious, pulling the wool over their naively trusting parents’ eyes). Our right to privacy is being relentlessly eroded in the name of public safety and now, it seems, the next generation is being softened up to accept biometric techniques as part of the daily routine, so normal that what to us seems a gross imposition and encroachment will go unnoticed much like the CCTV cameras mounted on every lamppost and traffic light. As for the incentive of prizes, how long before marks are given or taken away instead? Will access to universities depend on munching lettuce and shredded raw carrots instead of pass rates in established subjects?

Laura Clark in Are schools giving children too much choice for dinner? (Daily Mail, 17^th May 2006) looked at an alternative that might not go down too well in a consumerist context where a key social skill is the ability to make “informed choices”: “Children should eat the school dinners put in front of them rather than being given too much choice of dishes, according to one of the country’s foremost authorities on food.

Prue Leith said less lunchtime variety would help children develop healthier eating habits.

The cook and restaurateur said they should be offered just one healthy hot meal and a salad.

Britain was at its healthiest in the period just after the Second World War, when ‘the last thing children had was choice’, Miss Leith said.

She spoke out as official figures revealed more than half of all schools have failed to reach targets for providing healthy food and making pupils more active.

Fifty-four per cent have failed to achieve ‘healthy school’ status which is awarded for serving nutritious meals and offering at least two hours of sport a week. Up to nine in ten schools in some parts of the country have yet to reach the goal. The scale of failure emerged as ministers prepare to announce nutritional standards for school dinners which come into effect from September.

Fried food will be restricted and children must have at least two portions of fruit and vegetables a day. Oily fish should be on the menu frequently.

Miss Leith will call on ministers to go further when she addresses a conference tomorrow on school meals titled ‘They are what they eat’.

She will warn heads and governors that too many lunch options confuse pupils while schools lose large quantities of food to waste.

Secondary school pupils are offered up to seven meal choices while primary pupils have up to five. ‘It is a lot of nonsense to have so much choice,’ Miss Leith said.

‘People were healthiest just after the war, when the last thing children had was choice. It is confusing and leads to limited variety, because the same dishes need to be on offer. By changing the menu completely each day you are actually getting more variety and children are eating healthily.

‘It is utterly disgraceful how many schools don’t have water on tap for children, which means they have to buy a 40p bottle of water or, more likely, have cola’.

A spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills said: ‘We think children should have choice because that way they learn. But the only choices they will have will be healthy choices’”.

Felicity Lawrence, in Ban from September for school junk food (The Guardian, 3^rd March 2006), gave the low-down on a set of proposals, which at least attested to greater consistency: “A complete ban on confectionery, crisps and fizzy drinks being provided in schools looks sure to begin in September following the publication of advice to ministers by the new School Food Trust yesterday.

The food industry has been lobbying to water down the tough proposals on school food put out for consultation by the Department for Education and Skills last autumn. But the trust, which was set up by education secretary Ruth Kelly in the wake of chef Jamie Oliver’s acclaimed TV series on the subject, has ruled that new standards must apply to all food provided in schools including vending machines, tuck shops and cafeterias.

Dame Suzi Leather, the trust’s chairwoman, said: ‘New food standards from September will improve school meals, but they cannot succeed if pupils are surrounded with chocolate, crisps, and drinks that fill them up with sugar and fat during the school day. One in eight of our children is now obese. Anecdotal evidence suggests that, when these products are removed, behaviour also improves’.

Representatives of the food industry and vending machine companies told the trust ‘healthier’ snacks and fizzy drinks should be allowed. The trust decided that would cause confusion, would not contribute to education about good food and would increase dental erosion.

The new standards are expected to be agreed by Ms Kelly and will recommend:

No confectionery should be sold in schools

No bagged savoury snacks other than nuts and seeds – and these must be without added sugar or salt

A variety of fresh fruit and vegetables should be available

All children should have access to fresh free chilled water at all times, and this should not be in the toilet block

The only other drinks available should be bottled water, low fat milk, pure fruit juices, yoghurt and milk drinks with less than 5% sugar, or drinks made from these such as smoothies, tea or coffee. Artificial sweeteners will be allowed but only in these types of drinks

The advice does not apply to lunchboxes or fundraising events.

A recent survey carried out in Oxfordshire by the department of public health at Oxford University found that 95% of all vending machine products considered ‘less healthy’ would no longer be allowed under the trust’s rules. School vending machines have an estimated annual turnover of £45m.

Joe Harvey, head of the Health Education Trust and a member of the School Food Trust, said he was relieved that tough standards were in the final advice. ‘There’s been a huge fight over this. We still want artificial sweeteners removed, but it’s a brilliant result’”.

It would be easy for pupils to bypass the measures by stocking up on sweets and crisps before departing in the morning or by nipping out to the corner shop during the lunch break. Removing the opportunity to spend pocket money on such “naughty” treats from machines tacitly acknowledges the double standards that had characterised previous plans. The whole affair, however, fills me with melancholy. How depressing and dismal a childhood without Sherbet Fountains, penny chews, Tiny Tots, Barley Sugars, chocolate Buttons, Macaroon Bars and all the other delights I feasted on without fear of recrimination. No child eats them because they are filling or nourishing, but for the sheer enjoyment of them.

Sean Poulter, in School junk food ban (Daily Mail, 3^rd March 2006), touched upon the possible downside: “The ban may affect school budgets, as many receive up to £15,000 a year from snack food and fizzy drink firms to have their products on site”.

He then gave an inventory of what was on sale: “Chocolate made up 38 per cent of the foods on offer, savoury snacks 29 per cent, other confectionery 21 per cent and cakes and biscuits 8 per cent. Just 2 per cent of the machines offered fresh or dried fruit. And around half the drinks available from the machines and tuck shops were sugary fizzy brands such as Coke and Pepsi. Many of the others contained artificial sweeteners”.

He concluded: “Over the past ten years, obesity among six year olds has doubled to 8.5 per cent and trebled among 15 year olds to 15 per cent. At the same time, children eat an average of only two portions of fruit or vegetables a day, compared to the recommended five.

Dame Suzi Leather, head of the new School Food Trust, said new rules from September will improve canteen meals but other snacks must also be restricted.

‘It’s not in children’s best interests to have unlimited access to these products, and they replace the consumption of more nourishing foods. Anecdotal evidence suggests that when these products are removed, behaviour improves and this could also have implications for better learning’.

Richard Watts, of health and consumer group Sustain, said: ‘The key fact is that childhood obesity is rising very fast. It is no good improving school dinners and then allowing children to fill up on chocolate and crisps’.

Food and drink manufacturers, keen to attract young customers, pay schools up to £15,000 to have their vending machines on the premises”.

An editorial in The Guardian (4^th March 2006), Exit sugar, salt and fat heralded the news as a resounding victory: “The most heartening feature of this week’s ban on junk food was the response. There was barely a peep of protest from tabloid papers and scarcely an accusation of an expanding ‘nanny state’. Perhaps they have noticed how the public is catching on. Even before the School Food Trust, set up to provide independent advice on childhood nutrition, issued its latest edict, sales of junk food and sugary drinks were dropping. Indeed, the Trust’s new rules coincided with a profits warning from Britvic, manufacturers of Pepsi and Tango, that sales of fizzy drinks were falling except those with no added sugar. Just days earlier McDonald’s announced falling sales and the closure of 25 restaurants.

Clearly the vending industry was unhappy. It is estimated to make £45m a year from school vending machines. Its spokesman thought ‘educated choice would have been better than outright prohibition’. We need both. Now, thanks to last year’s Jamie Oliver TV series on school meals – as well as the 27,000 signatures on his ‘feed me better’ petition – a ban on foods high in fat, salt and sugar in school meals will begin in September. But, as Dame Suzi Leather, chair of the food trust noted yesterday, these rules would not succeed ‘if pupils are surrounded with chocolate, crisps and drinks that fill them up with sugar and fat all day’. She should have added artificial sweeteners to the admirable banned list and removed bottled water from permitted purchases on environmental grounds”.

Laura Clark, in School junk food ban to undo ‘years of neglect’ (Daily Mail, 20^th May 2006), reported on the official announcement in a similar vein: “Junk food will be banned from school canteens and vending machines to stop pupils eating the ‘rubbish they have been given for decades’ said the Education Secretary yesterday.

The crackdown will mean fresh fish, fruit and vegetables at lunchtime and the end of economy burgers and meat products made from ‘slurry’.

Chips will also be restricted under the new rules coming into effect from September”.

For once the Government curbed its more authoritarian instincts when it abandoned the idea of a ban on free movement, too blatant a violation of fundamental rights to get away with: “Mr [Alan] Johnson said the new standards would ‘undo decades of neglect’.

He denied that schools would struggle to find contractors to cook the healthier meals. The Minister told schools: ‘If you put the investment – which we’re doing – if you insist on the quality and you insist that our kids can no longer be given the kind of rubbish that they have been given for decades, you will find the contractors’.

He backed away from an earlier proposal to limit pupils leaving school at lunchtime, preferring to win them over with better school meals.

But Mr Johnson is only committed to spending 50p per primary pupil and 60p per secondary pupil as part of a £220million package over three years.

Last night nutritionists said spending per meal must rise to 70p in primary and 80p in secondary schools to meet the new standards.

And heads criticised the additional funding as ‘paltry’, amounting to just £2,000 extra each for secondary schools.

They also warned that students who refuse to improve their eating habits will simply converge on the nearest chip shop or bring in unhealthy packed lunches.

Dr John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, accused ministers of ‘micro-managing’ schools.

‘Students can still bring in a packed lunch full of crisps and junk food from home,’ he said.

‘It is much more important to educate parents and to limit the food industry’s marketing, which targets young people with advertisements for unhealthy products’.

Carol Whitty, deputy general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: ‘What we don’t want is teenagers hanging round the local chip shop’”.

Jay Rayner may have been stating the obvious in Meals bills ‘need to soar by 40 per cent’ (The Observer, 25^th June 2006), but without such insistent nudging the Government will hide behind any excuse to steer clear of extra investment: “The outgoing head of the School Food Trust has demanded that the government increase spending on school meals by 40 per cent, from the present 50p per meal in primary schools to 70p.

Dame Suzi Leather, who resigned last week from the trust set up by Tony Blair to oversee improvements to school meals in response to a public outcry over standards, following last year’s TV campaign by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, said the government’s plans were ‘inadequate’. Last month Alan Johnson, the new Education Secretary, announced that primary schools should be spending at least 50p on ingredients for each meal, and secondary schools 60p.

(…) Leather says there need to be higher standards. ‘I don’t think 50p is enough,’ she says. Her role included heading the School Meals Review Panel, which helped shape the new nutritional standards for school food. The standards, which come into force in September, called for a ban on processed items, crisps, fizzy drinks and confectionery, a minimum of two portions of fruit and vegetables with every meal and no more than two fried items a week. ‘From the countings that we did, the spend has to be 70p for primary schools and 80p for secondary schools,’ she said.

‘We strongly endorse that view,’ said Peter Melchett, the policy director of the Soil Association, which has long campaigned for improvements. ‘Three years ago we said 70p was a minimum spend per meal per primary school child, and nothing has changed in our view’.

A new survey by his association of changes in school meals in the past year (…) will make uncomfortable reading for the government. Uptakes of school meals in England fell in the past year from 49 per cent to 44 per cent, and the average spend on ingredients in primary schools has risen only marginally, from 47p to 51p.

‘The positive message we have found is that when reforms are carried out properly there is a huge uptake in school meals,’ Melchett said. ‘But where it’s done badly there is a drop’.

A year ago, in his Channel 4 series, Jamie Oliver found that the London borough of Greenwich was spending just 37p on each school meal. Since then the local authority has invested more than £600,000 in a new meals service and begun a healthier eating regime in 82 schools. Deep fried and processed foods are out: 30 million chips, 660,000 fish fingers and 255,000 turkey drummers have gone unserved. But there are still schools and councils underachieving. Some spend as little as 41p per meal.

Schools Minister Jim Knight rejected the criticism. ‘I think we’ve got some examples around the country where we’ve been able to reach the required standard for less than 50p and we should learn from that,’ he said. He insisted that the recommendations were for a ‘minimum spend’ and that the government had made available additional funds to ensure improvements. ‘Our multi-billion-pound school building programmes are restoring school kitchens. A further £220 million is being spent to help schools support training and increased hours for cooks, new equipment and a minimum spend on ingredients’”.

Jenny Hope showcased one of the more drastic antidotes in her headline Surgery for obese children on NHS (Daily Mail, 18^th March 2006): “Obese children are to have stomach surgery on the NHS.

Experts say the drastic action is needed to save a generation of overweight youngsters from dying before their parents.

Major operations such as stomach stapling and gastric banding – which carry life-threatening risks – will be offered to children as young as 14.

Many are so fat their health is endangered by heart disease, diabetes and other disorders.

Doctors are also being told they should prescribe anti-obesity drugs for the worst-affected children of 12 and under – even though the medication is licensed only for adults.

But some doctors condemned the controversial moves last night, saying obesity should be tackled by simply encouraging better diets and more exercise. More than a quarter of children are currently overweight, with one in seven youngsters between two and ten classed as obese.

The Government has set a target of halting the rise in obesity among under-11s by 2010. Its NHS treatment watchdog, the National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence, has now proposed the first-ever guidelines for fighting obesity in children.

Surgery would be an option for children who reach an age of ‘physiological maturity’, thought to be between 14 and 16. Operations such as stomach stapling and gastric banding (…) cost around £10,000 at private clinics.

The weight loss drugs Xenical and Reductil may be prescribed for teenagers, and even for younger children if doctors think their lives are at risk.

Although NICE accepts the drugs are not licensed to be used on children, it says doctors are legally permitted to do so if it will benefit their patients.

Professor Colin Waine, chairman of the National Obesity Forum, said surgery must be an option for childhood obesity.

He said: ‘I would accept the need for consideration of surgery when a child has achieved maximum height, there has been a failure of medical treatment and the child’s risk profile is significant.

‘These children are at risk of developing type 2 diabetes in later life, they have significant risk factors for premature cardiovascular disease and they are more at risk of developing cancer’.

Consultants at Sheffield Children’s Hospital said last year they were considering operating on obese children in their early teens as a ‘last resort’.

GP Dr David Haslam, clinical director of the NOF, said childhood obesity was such an enormous problem it needed extreme solutions.

He said: ‘Surgery could be life-saving for children who are obese and already developing heart disease.

‘But I believe GPs would not want to prescribe drugs to children under 12. They should be seen in specialist centres if this course of action was being considered’.

Other doctors are worried, however, that the issue of overweight children is being made into a medical problem when they should be encouraged to be more active and eat healthily.

Only around two-thirds of pupils in the state sector manage two hours of sport each week, according to government figures. About half of all six-year-olds in state schools are not getting the recommended two hours of PE every week.

Campaigners worried about the low activity levels have condemned the lack of sport provision. Playing fields have been disappearing at the rate of almost one a day under Labour.

Dr David Kerr, of the Bournemouth Diabetes Centre, said: ‘It’s a sad day when we are using pharmacological treatment or surgery to tackle a problem which is basically preventable.

‘This issue has become embedded with politics which is why we have only just got to the stage where children are being weighed and measured – an essential first step.

‘Our ‘ditch the fizz’ scheme to encourage children not to consume fizzy drinks can be as effective as taking weight-loss drugs. When we asked 1,000 secondary schoolchildren about exercise, they said they wanted to find out more about different things they could do.

‘These are much more effective ways of dealing with the problem than getting children to swallow drugs that at best have a modest benefit’.

The NICE guidelines, which will now go through an eight-week consultation process, say children would have to undergo a thorough psychological, educational, family and social assessment before being considered for surgery.

NICE said anti-obesity drugs should not be offered to children under 12 and should be given only to teenagers with ‘severe obesity-related health problems’.

But a spokesman for Abbott, which makes Reductil, said: ‘It is not indicated for use in children and we do not recommend its use off license’”.

I cannot help thinking that, once again, the course of least resistance is being selected to divert attention from the wider causes of our collective weight gain (which would require vastly greater sums to get to grips with), reducing the issue to personal “lifestyle choices”. Having forked out enough to put the patient under the knife, society at large can wash its hands of the unfortunate individual. Proper support and counselling from nutritionists cost money that nobody is willing to spend. Of course, all this is predicated on accepting the doctrine that fat spells doom.

The Daily Mail followed up with a case study in Obesity surgery for 34st teenager (2nd June 2006, unattributed): "A teenage girl who weighs 34st has undergone radical stomach surgery in a bid to save her life.

The 16-year-old – who is said to abuse food ‘in the same way others abuse tobacco and alcohol’ – may be the youngest person in Britain to undergo gastric band surgery.

The procedure involves placing a band around the upper part of the stomach, limiting food consumption.

Former television presented Anne Diamond recently had one of the devices fitted. She revealed that she wrote a letter to her children before the operation as she feared she would die.

The latest operation was a success and the teenager, from the west of Scotland, is said to be recovering well.

The surgery was carried out by David Galloway, a consultant surgeon at Gartnavel Hospital in Glasgow. He said last night the girl had reached 34st purely through overeating.

He said: ‘People of this weight only get to that stage by taking in huge amounts of calories.

‘They eat in the same way as others abuse tobacco or alcohol’.

The girl had a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 60 – twice the score of 30 which is the threshold for being classified as obese.

Surgeons are said to be considering making greater use of such radical surgery on adolescents as Britain’s obesity crisis deepens.

Dr Colin Waine, chairman of the National Obesity Forum, said: ‘There is now no doubt obesity is the biggest silent killer of modern times, causing cancer and heart disease – but Ministers are not doing nearly enough to combat the problems’".

Julie Wheldon made plain that adults would not necessarily be able to count on such “generosity” in future in Make smokers and drinkers pay for surgery say doctors (Daily Mail, 30^th June 2006): “Many hospital doctors believe smokers and drinkers should pay if they need surgery because of their habits, research has revealed.

Some also think obese patients should not be given weight-loss or joint surgery for free, a survey of hundreds of medics showed”.

These hardened front-liners of the medical profession are brutally honest in expressing their adhesion to the moralistic angle on fat: “(…) many are calling for patients to be charged for ‘self-inflicted’ conditions”.

Such callousness is widespread: “The poll showed that a quarter of medics do not think obese patients relying on drugs to bring their weight down or having orthopaedic treatments should be given them on the NHS.

Last year one trust in East Suffolk announced it would stop providing hip and knee operations to obese patients.

One doctor told the poll, carried out by Medix, that patients should accept some responsibility for illnesses caused by their actions”.

No quarter is to be given, no accommodation for human frailty permitted (notice by the way how smokers and the fat have been neatly and unquestioningly lumped together in the category of the culpably negligent): “Another said: ‘There is no point in putting joints into very obese people or doing vascular surgery again and again if the obese patient has not shown efforts at weight reduction before the op or if the vascular patient demands to smoke his first post-op cigarette on day one’”.

Thankfully not all have forgotten that they are in the business of care and that, leaving aside the value judgements that would exclude the “defective”, the rationing of such care in an affluent society where everyone pays their National Insurance contributions is profoundly undemocratic (as I have pointed out elsewhere): “However, not all doctors agreed. Chris Spencer-Jones, chairman of the British Medical Association’s public health committee warned that the suggestions amounted to rationing healthcare on the basis of prejudice.

He said much taxation is paid by those who smoke, are obese, or drink too much. ‘We should be helping rather than criticising them,’ he said”.

Already in 2005, Laura Clark expressed scepticism about the utility of weighing pupils as a panacea, spotting the irony of the method being deployed to detect the danger signs of obesity whereas it had originally been envisaged as a weapon in combating hunger (for us the great divide was between those who were plagued with head lice and those who were not, the former ostracised as having the dreaded “bugs”), in Pupils to be weighed in the battle against obesity (Wouldn’t a few PE lessons be more useful?), (Daily Mail, 29^th December 2005): “Schools are poised to reintroduce traditional medicals in which children are weighed at four and ten to stave off obesity.

The move comes amid mounting evidence that a generation of inactive youngsters face a lifetime of weight-related health problems.

Nurses hope to spot children who are becoming too fat by weighing and measuring them as they start primary school and again before they move up.

If a problem is identified, the youngsters will be given advice on healthier diets and exercise.

The Department of Health will issue guidance to primary care trusts next year on how to conduct the checks.

The move follows a 2004 White Paper aiming to halt the year-on-year increase in obesity among under-11s by 2010.

Critics leapt on the initiative as evidence that Labour was paying for its folly in allowing the long-term decline of sport in schools and selling off playing fields.

Figures show 22 per cent of boys and 28 per cent of girls aged two to 15 are overweight or obese.

Doctors have warned such children are increasingly suffering health problems usually associated with middle age such as joint pains and Type-2 diabetes.

The weigh ins amount to a 21^st-century version of the school medicals introduced at the turn of the last century to detect poor eyesight, stunted growth and malnutrition.

They were phased out in the Seventies, although remained at a handful of state and independent schools.

Although many health trusts already weigh and measure four and five year olds in reception classes, they will now be expected to check them at least once more before secondary school.

Parents will be able to refuse permission for their children to be assessed.

Officials hope to convince them the tests will be taken sensitively to avoid embarrassment.

For example, at a trial scheme in Blackburn, nurses and teaching assistants recorded heights and weights of ten year olds during maths lessons on measurement.

Individual trusts will decide whether or not to issue parents with the results of the checks. Even if parents are not informed, school nurses will be expected to help children who cause concern.

Dr David Haslam, clinical director of the National Obesity Forum, said: ‘This is such a massive problem something needs to be done.

‘This is a good idea if more resources are put into school nurses alongside it’.

But Mick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, warned: ‘This could be seen as more nannying by the Government and it exposes the past failures of policy and neglect of school sport. The obesity problem has been caused in large part by youngsters simply not getting enough exercise’.

A Department of Health spokesman said: ‘This is not so much about measuring individual children but about motivating children, families and local populations to live active healthy lives’”.

When the matter came to the fore again Jane Merrick headed the charge in Great state weigh-in is a waste, say MPs (Daily Mail, 12^th May 2006): “A national scheme to weigh every school child was branded a ‘disgraceful’ waste of public money by MPs last night.

School nurses have been banned from telling parents their children are overweight in case it ‘stigmatises’ them, it emerged.

Furious MPs questioned the point of spending millions of pounds a year on weighing pupils when the information was not being used to tackle the child obesity epidemic.

Government officials admitted to the Commons Public Accounts Committee that the data would only be used to monitor general ‘trends’.

Hugh Taylor, the top civil servant at the Department of Health, said: ‘There were concerns about issues of stigmatisation’.

The Government introduced the scheme last year after it emerged that more than one in four children between two and ten is overweight or obese, putting them at risk of health problems such as joint pains or diabetes.

The weigh-ins are targeted at pupils between four and ten.

When the Government announced the scheme last December, it was thought parents would be warned if their child was obese or at risk of obesity.

Labour MP Alan Williams said: ‘This is an astonishing waste of public money, and also irresponsible in terms of what it could mean for an individual’s health.

‘Individuals could end up with ill health, even some of them dying just because of political correctness’”.

Fatties’ feelings shouldn’t be spared, oh no, let their pasty, pudgy cheeks burn with the well-deserved shame of their foul iniquity! Let them sample the suffering that the error of their ways warrants!

The 21^st May 2006 edition of The Independent on Sunday carried several articles on the new proposals. Firstly, the front page article by Francis Elliott, The fat police: “Primary schoolchildren are to be routinely weighed and their parents told if they are obese in a controversial initiative to tackle the worsening health crisis (…)

Ministers have decided to overrule the Children’s Commissioner and their own child health officials, who fear that telling parents the test results will stigmatise some children.

Primary schools are preparing to weigh and measure the height of four-and 10-year-olds during this summer term to help prepare a national ‘map’ of childhood obesity. Individual statistics will only be given to parents who ask for them and no extra help will be offered to children who are found to be overweight or obese.

From next year, however, parents of any obese four- or 10-year-olds can expect a letter telling them their child faces long-term health damage unless they lose weight. The about-turn came after MPs dismissed as ‘drivel’ claims that telling parents the results could lead to children being bullied.

Caroline Flint, the health minister now leading the anti-obesity drive, believes parents are the ‘first and foremost influence’ on their children. She has overruled Professor Al Aynsley-Green, the Children’s Commissioner, who fears that obesity screening at four could do more harm than good. Her decision has delighted obesity campaigners, who say the danger to obese children’s future health is so great it outweighs any fears that they may be bullied.

But some experts expressed concern that it could distort children’s relationship with food and their own bodies. Dr Robin Arnold, of the BMA’s psychiatry committee, said he feared there would be increased rates of eating disorders.

But the agony aunt Virginia Ironside was sceptical of the need for an obesity screening programme. ‘It’s not as if being fat is a hidden problem, is it? It all seems a bit strict to measure everyone, and it will probably only succeed in getting parents’ backs up’.

This summer’s tests will be done in ‘light clothes’ and children will be told why they are being measured, according to Department of Health guidance issued earlier this year.

But the guidance spells out officials’ concerns at the potential for fatter children to be bullied as a result. ‘Children can be very sensitive about their own size and those of children around them. Measuring height and weight could accentuate this sensitivity and increase the risk of stigmatisation and bullying’.

Parents will be given the right to refuse permission for the child to be tested and can ask not to be sent the results next year.

But ministers hope the vast majority will want to be told about the results of the tests. ‘It’s about making sure that whatever we do, government supports families to make the right decisions. It is families who first and foremost influence what their children eat and what they do in terms of exercise,’ Ms Flint said earlier this year.

It is thought that the minister is studying US trials in which parents are sent one of three letters following their child’s measurements being taken. The first congratulates them on keeping their child within health limits, the second raises concerns that they may be getting out of shape, and the third is a stark warning that their child is obese and risks long-term health damage.

Dr Fiona Adshead, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, told a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee that child health officials had urged ministers not to tell parents the test results. ‘We had a lot of concerns from child health officials who wanted to caution us against systematically feeding information back to children. The reason they did that is we are not sure we can guarantee effective treatment’.

But the committee’s chairman, Edward Leigh, dismissed the excuse as ‘absolute nonsense’ and ‘drivel’”.

Francis Elliott and Megan Waitkoff were next with Fat: How the national obsession is coming into the classroom: “The letters are starting to land on doormats already. ‘Dear Parent,’ they begin, ‘next week school nurses will be coming to school to weigh and measure the height of your child’.

Barbara Richardson-Todd is readying herself for a frenetic month. ‘We’ve got about three weeks or four weeks to weigh and measure 10,000 children,’ says the senior nurse in charge of collecting obesity data on Suffolk’s primary school children. She would have had longer, she says, but there is a shortage of Government-approved scales caused by this summer’s mass weigh-in.

Almost without publicity, health officials have been preparing an extraordinary and controversial data-collection exercise. The Department of Health wants a detailed ‘fat map’ of England’s children. Within months we will know the most obese school in Britain, the skinniest, and every calibration in between.

The measurements are needed because the Government set a target to reduce the year-on-year increase in obesity in children under 11 by 2010, but has no standard figures to measure its progress. Ministers have decided that from next year parents of obese children will be told the results in an attempt to shock them into taking more responsibility for their children’s size.

That decision, taken in secret last week, overrules the Government’s own Children’s Commissioner as well as some child-health experts, who fear that such a screening programme could do more harm than good. Not only will it increase bullying, they say, there is a limited amount that can be done to make fat children thinner.

Ministers, however, stung by criticism that efforts to curb childhood obesity are stalled, have decided it’s time to tell parents the truth about their children. Although the food industry, advertisers and school dinner ladies all have their part to play, until parents wake up to the problem nothing will change, they say.

In all likelihood, the ‘fat map’ that emerges from the weigh-in will match closely race and class demographics: working-class children are more likely to be overweight, as are black girls.

‘Girls from black and Afro-Caribbean communities are more likely to be obese than some of their counterparts,’ Dr Fiona Adshead, Deputy Chief Medical Officer, told MPs this month.

But the sensitivities of weighing and measuring more than a million primary school children in two months are not limited to race and class.

‘The little ones don’t mind so much,’ says Ms Richardson-Todd. ‘Just as in measuring eye-sight, school nurses play pirates to get children to wear eye-patches so they make a game out of getting on the scales,’ she says. ‘The 10- and 11-year-olds are more tricky. They are becoming body conscious, so we see them one at a time’.

In one pilot project in Birmingham, the older children are weighed and measures behind a screen by teaching assistants as part of their maths class. It is a ‘de-medicalised’ model that other schools are being urged to follow – and it is designed to reduce the stigmatisation of fatter children.

Indeed, the Government’s own Children’s Commissioner, Professor Al Aynsley-Green, was so worried about what children would make of being measured that he commissioned research on the issue.

Reporting to MPs, health officials admitted they had found that some children feared they would be bullied as a result.

‘Some of the kids, especially the younger ones, expressed concerns about being measures. What they said is that they might be bullied, and particularly if children already have a reason why they might be bullied,’ said Dr Adshead.

Psychiatrists worry what sort of messages the young children will pick up from the anti-obesity drive. Dr Robin Arnold, of the British Medical Association’s psychiatry committee, said: ‘It may well be justified in public health terms but one wonders what it will do to rates of eating disorders like anorexia nervosa in the future’.

It is because of such fears that the Children’s Commissioner is opposed to feeding back children’s measurements back to parents.

Anti-obesity campaigners, however, insist that both measuring and reporting the results are justified. Dr Colin Waine, chairman of the National Obesity Forum, said: ‘We know that being obese in childhood can double the standard mortality rate in adults over the age of 50. It can increase the chance of cancer by 20 per cent in men and 14 per cent in women, the risk of type 2 diabetes is well known – the list goes on’.

Tam Fry, of the Child Growth Foundation, agrees: ‘I am delighted that ministers seem to have seen sense and decided to tell parents the data about their children. Just think that it is disastrous that we are only measuring children as they enter and exit primary school – we should be doing it more frequently’.

Hugh Taylor, the Department of Health’s most senior civil servant, told MPs he rejected claims that there was no effective treatment for childhood obesity, citing what he called the ‘chocolate biscuit test’.

‘If you look at what it would take to shift children out of the obesity category, we are talking about children on the cusp reducing the calorie intake by 30 to 40 calories a day. A chocolate biscuit is 80 calories a day; a packet of crisps is 120 calories a day. That gives you a measure that this ought to be a problem that is tacklable,’ he said.

The weighing exercise marks a return to what was routine in the age of the school medical, according to Claire Rayner. ‘Anyone over 50 will remember they took it for granted that they would be weighed and measured. I think as long as children know that it is happening to all of them there is no need to worry and, yes, parents should be told. I can imagine no better wake-up call than receiving a letter from school,’ said the agony aunt and patients’ rights campaigner.

Virginia Ironside, however, is sceptical about the programme. ‘It’s not as if being fat is a hidden problem, is it? It all seems a bit Germanic to measure everyone and will probably only succeed in getting parents’ backs up’.

Prue Leith, the celebrated cook and chairman of the British Food Trust, said: ‘We are getting obsessed with obesity, but weight is just too simple an answer. Children can be obese but at the same time malnourished because so many of them are protein deficient, thanks to a diet of largely pasta and bread.

‘A better solution is to give schools more money to improve ingredients, upgrade kitchens and train dinner ladies so they can motivate and inspire the kids. If they can get children caring about what they put into their bodies, the children will sort it out for themselves…weighing the kids and lecturing the parents is not the path to take’”.

Elliott and Waitkoff’s reservations about the venture extended to the use of BMI as a standard, but Government over-scrupulousness (verging on the paranoid) precluded alternatives being given serious consideration: “Perhaps the biggest concern about telling parents the results of the tests is that the measure used, body mass index, is notoriously misleading, especially when used to measure children. It cannot distinguish between fat and muscular physique, so paediatricians use waist circumference as a deciding measure when assessing whether a child is obese. But plans to routinely measure children’s waist circumference were dropped by health officials because it would involve the touching of children. Caught between not wanting to hurt children’s feelings or expose them to potential abuse, and wanting to save them from a life dogged by ill-health, ministers have ended up with a messy compromise”.

In the same edition, Candida Crewe shared her memories of the experience in The weigh-in could become a weapon in the war against fat: “At the beginning and end of each term we were ordered into a queue for our turn at the stake: a step up in front of everyone on to the old-fashioned scales in the school hall. They closely resembled the outsized ones in the school kitchen, daily employed to weigh large slabs of meat or dough.

We watched each victim flinching before the nurse as she flicked the brass gauge left, then right, and then, in my case at any rate, right again. We were seven, 11, 14, already in the business of comparing our pounds, and this all-too-public weigh-in promoted our anxieties and left no place to hide.

Those of us fatter than desirable keenly felt the burden of collective disapproval – of staff and peers alike – and of the inner misery that disapproval engendered. It is a humiliation I can remember to this day, and no school child should ever have to suffer it.

I do not object to the principle of the school weigh-in. The obesity problem is so dire that almost anything that promotes the fight against it is surely a force for good. Yet if the Government insists on reviving it, it must be conducted in new, more enlightened terms.

Parental consent must be gained. Each child must step on the scales only in strictest privacy (even if it means the nurse carrying out her duty in the school stationery cupboard). And, if a child has put on (or lost) a lot of weight, there must be in place a system that provides sensitive as well as discreet help and advice.

A school weigh-in alone will achieve nothing other than the fallout of low self-esteem. Managed conscientiously, though, it could become one small but effective weapon in the mother of all wars, which a gluttonous Western world is increasingly bringing upon itself”.

For Crewe the end justifies the means in spite of the pain that lingers in her words and I am deeply saddened that she so glibly ascribes the phenomenon to the single cause of simple greed.

Judith Moore’s heartrending and lyrical autobiography perfectly captures the awfulness of the experience: “Each month or so when the teacher marched the class to the nurse’s room to be weighed I was terrified. I dreaded this day. You never knew when it was going to happen, either, so you couldn’t stay home sick. As each child stood on the scale, one nurse pulled out the bar that measured height. I heard the bar clank. As soon as the nurse got the bar atop the child’s head, the nurse called out the height – four feet five inches, whatever – and the second nurse pencilled in the measurement. Then the weigh-in nurse slid back and forth the bar on the scale. When the weight settled, she called out, ‘Seventy-one pounds, Marie Tagliavia’. The nurse pencilled that in.

Not one other child in that entire class needed the one-hundred-pound bar. I knew that. As the line grew shorter, as child after child was measured and weighed, he or she went to stand at the back of the room. ‘Don’t fidget,’ the teacher might say, or, ‘No talking. Shhh’.

I wanted to bolt. I couldn’t. I bowed my head, I gazed at my boy’s FFFF-width brown oxfords. I kept count as one after another child got weighed. I hoped the A-bomb would fall or a fire start before the nurse got to me.

(…)

When I stood on the scale, the scale jiggled. Boys and girls near me were laughing and the teacher said ‘Shhh’ again. ‘One hundred and ten, almost one hundred and eleven,’ the nurse who weighed me called out to the nurse who jotted in your weight.

Before we left the infirmary the nurse who weighed me handed me a note for my mother. She said that she wrote that maybe I had a bad thyroid and she should take me to the family doctor. We didn’t have a family doctor. We didn’t have a family” (Fat Girl, London, Profile Books, 2005, pp94-6).

Commentator John Rentoul also gave the knee-jerk quality of the proposals short shrift in Fat police: guilty as charged (same edition): “It is curious that Tony Blair’s government will be remembered for many things to which he was either personally indifferent (such as the smoking ban) or actively hostile (such as the ban on fox-hunting). A further curiosity is the one of the achievements in which Blair strongly believed, and of which he is justly proud, is the promotion of equal rights for gay people. It was accomplished partly by stealth and is therefore largely overlooked. The abolition of Section 28, the lifting of the ban on gays in the Armed Forces, the equalisation of the age of consent and the advent of civil partnerships amount to a huge advance towards a more tolerant society.

Now we are witnessing a similarly significant change, albeit in a rather different direction, namely the arrival of the fat police. I doubt if the Prime Minister even knows it is happening. His wife did briefly hop on the Jamie Oliver bandwagon during the last election campaign, telling parents on a school visit in Birmingham that she was ‘seriously thinking about’ sending Leo, then nearly five, into school with a packed lunch. But I doubt that Leo’s father has the slightest idea what his government’s policy on childhood obesity either is or should be.

That is the trouble. I suspect that if the Prime Minister thinks at all about the plan to weigh and measure all four-year-olds in school, his views will be utterly conventional. And therefore totally wrong. It is an extraordinary example of government by inertia. By which I mean not a government that does nothing, because that would actually be rather different and highly Conservative, in the old, pre-Thatcher sense. I mean a government that does things for the sake of it, so that junior ministers can appear busy and press officers have some ‘good news’ stories to put out.

When that happens, a government will simply reflect back to the media and public opinion what their concerns are. Thus ministers think they are responding to what the people want when in fact they are following the line of least resistance. In this case, they are responding to a popular panic about fat children, which partly reflects our society’s abnormal relationship with food, in a way that will make that relationship more difficult still.

Candida Crewe, the novelist (…) has said that ‘almost all women in the West, myself very much included, have a relationship with food and weight that is not straightforward’. They hear ‘a continuous soundtrack in our head which is telling us what we might and might not eat’.

That applies to increasing numbers of men, too, and it often starts in childhood, as it did in Crewe’s case. One way to make matters worse is to weigh four-year-olds and encourage them to worry about what they eat. Then do it again when they are 10. By the time they are teenagers, they should be properly neurotic.

It almost doesn’t matter what children eat. It seems to me that ideas about what food is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ that are projected on to children too often reflect adult obsessions with fats and sugar that do not apply to growing young people.

The new standards for school lunches announced on Friday by Alan Johnson are a good example, no more than two deep-fried portions a week. To make matters worse, the rule against crisps and chocolate is not even a mealy-mouthed guideline but seems to be an outright ban, betraying the new Education Secretary’s nanny-state instinct.

The whole Jamie Oliver campaign has been a sideshow, distorted to serve the needs of the panic of the times. Everyone is in favour of children having expensive food for lunches rather than cheap food, but school food has always been rubbish and so it cannot be a cause of fatter children.

Obesity has increased among a small minority of children mainly because they don’t run about as much as they used to. Of course, the nanny state has invaded this part of the private sphere too, with more justification and less risk of lasting psychological harm but equally little chance of success.

This week is ‘Walk to School Week’. See if that makes any difference to traffic congestion between 8.30 and 9.30 tomorrow morning. Next week will no doubt be ‘Uninventing the Television and the Games Console Week’. The week after will be ‘In and Out of Each Other’s Houses, Never Have to Lock the Doors, Out Blackberry Picking All Day, Paedophiles Don’t Exist Week’.

There is little the Government can do and less that it should do to encourage children or adults to be more physically active. So what we get is a lot of snobbery about how working-class children eat so-called junk food and spend their leisure time on the PS2. When the snobbery becomes too obvious, we get middle-class guilt about doing the school run in a luxury 4×4. Of course, there is a class dimension to obesity, as there is to many health problems. Inequality is bad for your health if you are poor. Yet last weekend saw the publication of remarkable figures showing that the distribution of disposable income has become more equal than at any time since 1987.

So while achievements on a heroic scale pass by unnoticed, without comment, Government priorities are driven by popular neuroses about food. In this case, ministers want to be seen to be doing something about childhood obesity, so they have ordered it to be measured and set a target for halting its increase with no idea how it is to be met.

The inevitable result, because too few ministers have any instinctive understanding of what a free society means, is a vast, bureaucratic and authoritarian scheme to measure every child in the country at the ages of four and 10. Parents have the right to refuse permission for their children to be weighed and measured, but should not be put in that position in the first place. Meanwhile, in their desperate search for ways to meet targets they should never have set, ministers fall prey to every self-appointed expert group on nutrition and every lobby for organised sports activities. This is bureaucratic activism run mad.

Last week, David Cameron accused Tony Blair of presiding over ‘a government in complete paralysis’. If only”.

Finally, the editorial, A fat load of good endorsed Rentoul’s analysis: “People don’t want to live in a nanny state. Thus spake the Prime Minister during a previous discussion about obesity, when it was alleged that his advisers wanted to impose a ‘fat tax’ on supposedly unhealthy foods. He was right, but unfortunately his ministers have been over-zealous in their desire to be seen to be doing something about childhood obesity. Theirs is not an ignoble motivation. Of course, as Tony Blair said, it is not the Government’s job to make people thin, but equally the state has a responsibility to give people the information they need to keep themselves, and their children, healthy. Health education campaigns backed by legislation can work wonders without intruding on people’s liberties. Even before the ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces comes into effect next year, smoking was in decline.

Public health campaigns should never rely on government action alone. More important than last week’s new standards for school lunches, for example, is Jamie Oliver’s campaign to encourage children to eat better, both at school and at home. Mr Oliver has been accused of self-promotion, but it is precisely his success in this department that makes him such a potential force for good. He should be judged by his works, which have been a triumph for celebrity culture. When the chips are down, Mr Oliver has rather greater purchase on popular culture than Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary.

Yet some ministers have learnt nothing from Mr Oliver about changing attitudes and remembered nothing from the Prime Minister about the dangers of the nanny state. The way they have gone about promoting children’s health is extraordinary. They have responded to a moral panic about rising numbers of fat children by tackling the symptoms not the causes. First, they set a target to halt the year-on-year increase in obesity in children under 11 by the year 2010. You would have thought this government would have realised by now the dangers of ill-chosen targets. Then ministers realised that they did not have the data by which to know if they had met the target, so they launch a huge exercise to weigh and measure all children in England at four to five, and at 10 to 11.

This was bad enough. Rather like installing metal detectors at school gates, this can only have a damaging effect on pupils’ feelings about school. It is bound to make some children more self-conscious about their bodies, which is the cause of later problems. But (…) ministers have made matters worse. Realising they have no means by which to achieve the target, they are turning what was a data-collection exercise into a fully-fledged screening programme. The Government still has no idea how to make fat children thinner, but it thinks that unless it identifies them at an early stage then it has no chance. From the summer term 2007, if children are deemed overweight, their parents will receive a letter.

This is a bizarre and shocking example of how the ratchet of an authoritarian state can operate if politicians, citizens and media relax their vigilance in defence of civil liberties. Our children, already over-tested and over-regulated, are now to be over-labelled. If enough parents refuse permission for their children to be measured, the exercise will become pointless. How much better, however, if Alan Johnson and Patricia Hewitt, the Education and Health secretaries, come to their senses and tip the scales against this ill-conceived plan”.

The Daily Mail likewise splashed the news over its front page with Laura Clark’s ‘Fat tests’ for four year olds at school (22^nd May 2006): “Children are to be weighed at the ages of four and ten and their parents warned if they are too fat.

The school screening regime is aimed at fighting the obesity epidemic which threatens a generation of youngsters with a lifetime of ill-health.

But the plan triggered angry claims that the Government is trying to dictate the size of children. Critics dismissed the weigh-in scheme as misguided, costly, bureaucratic and a dramatic extension of the ‘nanny state’.

They said pupils branded as overweight could be stigmatised and bullied.

Under the programme, children will be weighed and measured as they start primary school and again before they leave. Parents of those judged too heavy will be sent letters warning of long-term health problems unless they lose weight”.

The initiative could easily backfire on the Government: “But parents’ groups warned that the weigh-in letters could be ignored or deeply resented while psychiatrists warned of a surge in eating disorders among children.

Margaret Morrisey of the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations said: ‘It appears to be more of the ‘nanny state’ and I don’t think it’s going to be terribly effective.

‘What we do in our own homes is our business and some parents may not react particularly well.

‘We all appreciate guidance on good diets but most of us think we are already doing our best to provide that.

‘Parents may say ‘so what?’ If parents have a particular lifestyle and they prefer it, all the letters in the world will not make a difference.

‘This will be extremely expensive to introduce and I do not believe it’s the most efficient way of tackling obesity’”.

No consensus had been arrived at concerning the wisdom of the plans: “Sociologist Patricia Morgan [for the record: this is one of the extremely rare occasions on which our views coincide] said youngsters who were tubby as children often became slimmer naturally without outside interference.

She said: ‘It used to be called puppy fat and it was accepted children would grow out of it.

‘This is another piece of surveillance and another layer of bureaucracy. The risk is that people will become less likely to change things on their own initiative’.

The first weigh-ins, with echoes of the traditional school medicals largely phased out in the 1970s, will take place in the current term.

Parents will not be told the results unless they request them. From next year, however, they are likely to be sent the figures automatically unless they specifically ask for this not to happen.

Parents can withdraw their children from the tests altogether, but Ministers say the measurements can be taken discreetly. In trials, the heights and weights of 10-year-olds were recorded during maths lessons.

Teachers were issued with dummy data to avoid embarrassing children with ‘extreme proportions’ during class discussions of the findings”.

Indeed: “The Children’s Commissioner, Professor Al Aynsley-Green, has expressed reservations about the scheme and nurses have warned that it could amount to an invasion of privacy.

Chris Etherington, vice-chairman of the Royal College of Nursing school nurses forum, said: ‘The RCN is not opposed to primary school children being weighed and measured but we have concerns about how it is done to avoid stigmatising them.

‘Children will pick up on the tallest, largest and smallest. Is this a positive experience for them to be going through?’”.

Clark’s piece closed with the same observation as that made by her colleague Merrick: “Ironically, school medicals were first introduced at the turn of last century to help detect stunted growth and malnutrition. Only a handful of state schools and some independents still offer them”.

The editorial, This nannying state imputed more sinister motives to the Government, interpreting the data-gathering as part of a concerted assault on the family (hardly novel given the paper’s political persuasion): “When New Labour hates competitive sports, sidelines PE and sells off school playing fields as fast as it can, it isn’t surprising that children grow fatter.

You thought the solution was obvious? Not to our rulers it isn’t. Instead of encouraging more physical activity, they solemnly propose a vast, bureaucratic scheme to weigh all four and ten-year-olds, store their details on a Whitehall computer and create a national ‘fat map’.

Quite what use it will be is anybody’s guess. But the problems are already apparent. The Government’s own experts fear this scheme will lead to more childhood neuroses, more eating disorders and more bullying.

But as usual Ministers ignore the experts. And they certainly don’t care what parents think.

How often we have been here before.

New Labour penalises couples, offers incentives to single parenthood, encourages mothers with young children to go out to work while doing nothing for those who don’t, assigns ‘supernannies’ to tell parents what to do and even promotes a ‘nappy curriculum’ on how babies should develop. Now this.

The nanny state, indeed – and another example of political interference in every aspect of family life”.

The Daily Mail’s letters page printed Mrs Judith Webb’s anecdote about her son’s faddishness (5^th July 2006) due to its wider relevance: “The ‘nanny state’ plans to check what our children are being fed.

(…)

All children go through phases with their food, and not wanting to eat fruit and vegetables is fairly common in young children. It reminded me of the period when my eldest son, now 31, would eat only fish and chips and baked beans and nothing would have coerced him into eating anything else.

He was only about four at the time, but, like most children in the civilised world, he did not starve to death or suffer malnutrition.

In fact, he eats almost anything now.

I would have been mortified if the authorities or the ‘food police’ had turned up at our door one teatime to check on what I was giving him for his tea and put me on trial for not feeding him a healthier meal.

As far as I can tell, he never suffered any long-term effects from his short spell of fussiness.

I always thought that as long as he ate something, it was better than nothing at all”.

We British take pride in our head-held-high individualism, our defiance in the teeth of opprobrium and our no-nonsense, down-to-earth common sense as an integral part of our national character (epitomised in Ransome’s “Better drowned than Duffers, if not Duffers won’t drown”). We also have a deep-seated aversion to being told what we can and cannot do, one of the Right’s favourite gripes being that any adult with two brain cells to rub together does not need to be warned that the coffee served in a popular fast-food outlet might scald you (the lawsuit giving rise to much supercilious self-congratulation that we had not sunk so far. My son and I laughed at the probably apocryphal tale recounted on a programme where comedians take a sideways glance at the week’s news – in the parlance of the TV magazine – according to which a superhero costume’s cape had a warning label sewed to it, which stated deadpan: “Does not enable actual flight”) or that Spurlock wouldn’t have a leg to stand on in a British court if he tried to sue for the damage done to his health during his experiment in subsisting on Big Macs. Unfortunately, this is what lies behind the scorn heaped on the Government’s encroachments on our freedoms, not some newly discovered “warm and fuzzy” urge to stick up for the fat, much less forgive them their transgression.

The ever-dependable Johann Hari quite rightly took schools to task for the way they leave the less than super-athletic in the lurch in A new kind of PE could cure childhood obesity (The Independent, 22^nd May 2006): “‘All four corners of the gym – go!’ Even now those words make me feel breathless, humiliated and very slightly nauseous. This weekend, it was revealed childhood obesity is so chronic in Britain that the Government is going to weigh all four-year-olds to pick up the warning flab, but the proposed solutions have been weirdly one-sided. Parents of dangerously overweight children will be told to change their diet, and schools are being given instructions to serve less grease and more greens. There are, of course, smart ideas – my own junk food addiction kicked in at school dinners – but they are only a small part of the fat-story.

The way we teach Physical Education is a disaster; and an obstacle to stemming the rise of porker-kids who will develop diabetes in their thirties. Children growing up in our sedentary, fat-saturated culture desperately need to be taught about their bodies, and to be equipped with basic fitness skills they can keep using into adulthood.

Does anybody think PE does that? It had the opposite effect on me, putting me off exercise for decades. As it is currently taught, PE works brilliantly for the children who don’t need it – the ones who love sports and play them anyway – and it totally fails the kids who need it most, the fat and unhealthy ones.

(…) All I learned from PE lessons was that exercise is humiliating and excruciatingly dull. The stand-up comedian Alan Carr compares the process of picking out teams for sports to ethnic cleansing, with the weakest and fattest left waiting in a straggling queue watching their friends disappear one by one. Imagine if English lessons were structured like this, primed to disgrace the illiterate, with the whole class actively encouraged to mock the kids who couldn’t read properly.

I quickly developed the tactic of running shrieking from any on-coming ball, and spent the lessons lounging to escape the grinding tedium so I could sit in the changing room moodily reading Dostoyevsky (…)

It is only in the last few months that I have learnt the things that I should have picked up at school: that exercise can actually be an enjoyable process (…)

I sweatily booked an appointment with a personal trainer (…) and it has been a treadmill road to Damascus. Michael taught me about my internal organs, my Body Mass Index, simple exercises and easy shortcuts away from a quadruple chin. It would not be hard to teach the same lessons to children, who are far more body-conscious now than they were two decades ago when I was at primary school.

My eight-year-old nephew is constantly asking about diets and demanding to know what you need to do to get a six-pack, when the only six-pack I knew about at his age was of full-sugar Coke. Modern kids have a ravenous hunger to learn about their bodies and how to control them.

How could this be done? The first step is to stream, stream, stream. If you can stream kids for maths, why not for PE? Fat children will never want to learn physical fitness alongside super-healthy sports-kids; they will simply dread, avoid or shut down in the lessons. Once you have separated out the children according to their needs, the already-healthy children can spend their lessons playing football or rounders or rugby as much as they like to maintain their fitness levels, with a few potted lessons about nutrition and healthy eating thrown in.

But for the overweight children, PE as it exists now – taught largely by the least-qualified and least intelligent teachers – should be scrapped in favour of Health Lessons. These children should be taught about the long-term dangers of over-eating, the various food groups (I left school totally unable to tell a carb from a crab) and how they affect your body, how to cook healthy foods (my parents had no idea) and some basic, non-competitive exercises they can perform in private every day.

Or should another generation of kids have to wait two decades, gain five stone and fork out their own cash to learn how to keep fit? All we are teaching fat children today is to head to all four corners of McDonald’s for some comfort food”.

Hari’s article is marred by the unreflective equation of fat with unfit and unhealthy and great care would have to be taken to stop streaming from degenerating into segregation or fat apartheid (with the slimmer children taunting the “slobs’ team” as they head for the pitch).

Anushka Asthana, however, suggested that there might be a ray of hope on the PE front in Holmes urges children to dance themselves fit (The Observer, 4th June 2006): "Thousands of children aged seven to 11 will be encouraged to take up salsa dancing, martial arts and circus skills at school in an attempt to encourage them to keep fit.

On Tuesday, Dame Kelly Holmes, and the sports minister Richard Cabourn will launch the programme of ‘alternative’ activities for children. TOP Activity, which has been developed by the Youth Sport Trust, will be piloted at 500 schools. Holmes said: ‘It will be a brilliant way of inspiring more young people into taking up physical activity, particularly those who shy away from more traditional sports.

Dance and martial arts are a great way of showing young people that sport is for everyone".

Barry Wigmore, in Doctors call for a ‘fat tax’ on Coca-Cola and Pepsi (Daily Mail, 12th June 2006), took advantage of tidings from the States about yet another penalty imposed on the fat (although again it panders to the condescending stereotype to connect the consumption of sugary beverages solely with society’s unslender outcasts): "Doctors will this week declare war on America’s soft drinks industry by calling for a ‘fat tax’ to combat the nation’s obesity epidemic.

Delegates at the powerful American Medical Association’s annual conference will demand a levy on the sweeteners put in sugary drinks to pay for a massive public health education campaign.

They will also call for the amount of salt added to burgers and processed foods to be halved.

The moves come as US doctors – like their British counterparts – are becoming increasingly alarmed at the growing number of deaths linked to obesity.

The resolution will put doctors on a collision course with Coca-Cola and Pepsi, plus the likes of McDonald’s and Burger King.

Sales of soft drinks in US schools are in decline ahead of the introduction of guidelines allowing only healthier low-calories drinks, plus milk and certain fruit juices, over the next two years.

But the medical association wants to go further. Delegates at its Chicago conference are gunning in particular for high fructose corn syrup, the sweetener which is added to everything from ketchup to cola.

One American politician labelled it the ‘crack of sweeteners’ because it is so widespread.

Some US cities and states already levy taxes on soft drinks or junk foods that raise £500million a year, said Michael Jacobsen, director of the Centre for Science and the Public Interest, an independent health watchdog. But earmarking tax revenue for programmes promoting better diet would be a first, he added.

American doctors are seeing the same alarming trends as those in Britain where obesity is considered to be a ‘ticking timebomb [sic] of epidemic proportions’.

More than 30,000 Britons die each year because of obesity. In England, 47 per cent of men and 33 per cent of women are overweight, with around a fifth being obese. The problem costs the Health Service £500million in consultations, drugs and other therapies.

Life insurance companies are considering increased premiums for overweight clients because so many are dying prematurely from heart disease and cancer. Cancer Research UK has warned that obesity will soon cause more cancers than smoking.

Just as alarming is the rapid growth in childhood obesity. Among six-year-olds, one in ten classed as obese, rising to one in five among 15-year-olds.

The Government has warned that the current generation of schoolchildren could be the first to live shorter lives than their parents".

Julie Wheldon, in The real reason children won’t eat their greens (Daily Mail, 14th June 2006), again recommended an ascetic style of child-rearing, complete with the self-policing techniques propagated by the diet industry: "Getting children to eat their greens is never easy – but research shows it is vital that parents keep trying.

A love of foods such as meat and fish is largely inherited from our parents, scientists have found.

But a liking for vegetables and fruit is determined almost entirely by our upbringing.

This suggests the only way to ensure children grow up eating their ‘five a day’ is to encourage them to eat vegetables from an early age and ensure the fruit bowl is always full.

The study also found that a sweet tooth and a love of puddings is all about the way our families view such treats.

Children who have grown up watching parents gleefully tuck into crumble and custard or cakes are therefore very likely to do the same.

Cancer Research UK scientists who carried out the study hope it will shed valuable light on obesity by helping understand why certain children grow up to have unhealthy diets".

In case the exhortation about the perils of relaxing vigilance was too subtle, the standard list of calamities was appended: "Experts say 12,000 cases of cancer could be prevented each year in the UK if no one was overweight.

The team studied more than 200 pairs of same-sex twins to try to work out if we inherit our tastes for food. They studied 103 pairs of identical twins and 111 pairs of non-identical twins for comparison.

These kind [sic] of studies are key to working out if nature or nurture determines our behaviour. Because identical twins share the same genes, any differences that emerge must be down to upbringing rather than inherited traits.

The study asked the mothers of the twins to state whether their children liked or disliked 77 foods divided into four categories – meat, fish, desserts, and vegetables and fruit.

The study (…) found clear trends in which foods children liked.

It emerged that genes had a strong influence on whether children liked meat and fish.

They played a much weaker role, however, in determining whether children liked desserts such as sponge pudding, custard, cakes and pastries.

They also seemed to have very little influence on children’s liking of vegetables such as broccoli and cabbage, and fruits such as apples, bananas and strawberries.

Lead researcher Jane Wardle, of the charity’s health behaviour unit’, said: ‘This is the first study to include significant numbers of protein foods and the first to show high heritability for these.

‘But it is not clear exactly what environmental factors are influential when it comes to fruit, vegetables or puddings.

‘It might be that children who witness their parents show enthusiasm or distaste for certain types of vegetables or puddings are likely to follow suit.

‘Or it might be that if a particular food is always available, children learn to like it.

‘For instance, if a fruit bowl is always full of bananas, then children might think of them as being a favourite food’".

Lest the Government, casting about for inspiration, should contemplate importing the idea of “fat camps”, I turn to Marcia Millman. She studied the goings on at Camp Laurel, an establishment accommodating children between the ages of seven and eighteen, which promised to assist them in losing weight (in exchange for an exorbitant fee). Millman mulls over why parents might fall back on such a radical expedient: “But as early as childhood we can also see the beginnings of experiences and world views that will probably follow the overweight person all through life: being excluded and separated from normal society because of their weight, believing that losing weight will solve all their problems, and experiencing dieting as unjust punishment imposed from the outside” (op. cit., p54).

Millman does not pretend that the experience will be a pleasant one for the unfortunates whose parents have enrolled them: “What makes diet camp seem so much like prison is that by being sent there, the child is implicitly told that he or she is not fit to be with normal children. And although some eventually come to believe (or partly believe) that they are being sent for their own good, few are happy about it at first. Not only does the experience segregate fat children from the world of normals, but it also takes a happy time – summer – and turns it into a season of deprivation and labour. It denies these children what they most enjoy doing – eating – and substitutes what they hate most: strenuous exercise. Several campers lie to their winter friends about where they are going for the summer, because they are ashamed and feel that being sent to a special camp will further mark them as fat and different in the eyes of their peers” (Millman, pp55-6).

Suspicion is rife, the atmosphere far from happy-go-lucky: “Not only do the children feel constantly starved for food (and indeed, one might well ask whether young children should be on such a restricted diet) but to some extent they also regard the staff as jailers. The presumption is made by the staff that without constant surveillance many of the children will be importing forbidden food into the camp, cheating on their diets, and avoiding exercise. The enforcement of diets and exercise is both a cause and outcome of the children’s non-compliance.

Feeling pushed around, the children do rebel whenever they can. Complaining of how the camp is ‘killing them’, many approach exercises and sports that children usually enjoy with a lethargy and disdain that are remarkable” (op. cit., p56).

Indeed the creative energies of the “inmates” are diverted into subverting the rules: “But most rebellious of all are the food smugglers. Dreaming up ways to cheat on the diet is a continuous project among campers, pursued with far more interest and enthusiasm than the exercises. The camp has a fairly tight food control system. For example, all packages arriving in the mail must be opened in a counselor’s presence, and even money is forbidden to campers since it might be used to commission the purchase of candy when someone gets permission to go into town. The camp expects this mutiny from the diet. The older children know that all campers are sent to the movies the afternoon after parents’ visiting days so their bunks and mattresses can be thoroughly searched by counselors for hidden food” (op. cit., pp56-7).

Millman’s verdict is that ultimately the camps do more harm than good: “One of the most significant dangers of sending children to a diet camp is that they learn to associate dieting with punishment or at least arbitrary external rule rather than as something voluntarily pursued as a way of being good to themselves. The source of control for what can or can’t be eaten rests outside the child, and the child’s sense of control can then come only from cheating or resisting. Thus begins a long career of associating dieting with oppressive restrictions imposed from the outside and to be resisted or abandoned. Thus the camp may be experienced as a prison in a fundamental way; put someone in prison and all they will think about is how to get out. Put people on a diet with external monitors and enforcement and all they will think about is how to cheat. What campers may be learning, like first-time offenders in jail, may be why they should resent the authorities and how to circumvent them rather than why and how they should ‘rehabilitate’ themselves” (Millman, p58).

However, she does not paint an entirely negative picture, as the camp also plays the role of a “refuge from a hostile world”: “Learning to be comfortable around other fat children is just one of the many identity experiences children have at camp. In some ways, being with other fat children minimizes the salience of their weight for their social identities. Since all the children are fat, they can see and relate to each other and themselves in terms of other characteristics. But in other ways being segregated from the normal world also underscores and enlarges the importance of their weight. In an ironic way the camp actually schools them in the ways of surviving as a fat person in a hostile, unsympathetic world and, indeed, teaches them to view the world from the perspective of a member of an oppressed minority group. Whether the camp is considered a refuge or a prison, one thing is certain: the outside world is a place to be dealt with guardedly” (Millman, pp59-60).

That said, Millman witnessed a replicating of relations outside the camp with the slimmer girls seeking out each other’s company to establish an elite clique, their vicious tongues wagging about what size of underwear their plumper fellow campers were wearing and posing in front of the mirror in feigned distress about their huge bulk, as a means of rubbing their larger companions’ noses in their relative “inferiority”. Apart from the jockeying for position, the same yardstick of attractiveness held sway within as outside of the boundary: “(…) one seventeen-year-old male counsellor who was quite a bit overweight himself admitted that he preferred thinner girls and would certainly never date a fat girl at home, because his parents had told him that he should have ‘the best’. Fat girls, in his estimation, had no self-respect because they had to settle for what they could get. He also expressed concern about how fat girlfriends would reflect on him: ‘If I dated a fat girl and we walked down the street, someone would say, ‘Oh look at that fat couple. Aren’t they cute’. But if I was with a thin girl, I wouldn’t mind if someone said, ‘How did that fat guy get that beautiful girl – he must be pretty good’”. Asked if he thought it was worse to be a fat woman than a fat man he replied, ‘A guy can be big, but a girl should be petite. Girl goes with petite like pie goes with coffee or bagels go with cram cheese’” (Millman, p65).

Judith Moore’s moving passage on isolation and being permanently banished to the periphery distils all these feelings of frustration and sorrow so familiar to us: “I hated everyone and yet I wanted everyone to love me. I stood at the playground edge. I watched girls on swings. They had thin legs and pulled their white socks up high on their slender calves. They sailed high, long hair flying behind them. Smiles creased their faces and they opened their eyes wide. I watched boys watch these girls. I knew boys never would watch me this way. I knew they wouldn’t chew a grass blade and narrow their eyes and study my slender legs. I would never have long slender legs. I wanted to be invited to thin girl birthday parties. I wanted to see the cake their mother carried to the party table. The thin girl’s mother decorated the thin girl’s cake with pink rosebuds heaped one atop another. I could smell from far away the sweet frosting, the strong burning sugar scent” (op. cit., pp100-101).

As for the long-term impact: “Even on visiting day, it is already obvious that the transformation is only skin deep, and once free of external control they will revert to their old habits. Despite what they learned in nutrition class and even in the presence of their parents, many go on a binge, jamming so much eating into their day-long furlough that they actually make themselves sick with indigestion after weeks of dieting. And like paroled prisoners who go back to the old neighbourhood, once on the loose at the end of summer many of the campers will reacquaint themselves with all their old friends: pizza, ice cream, candy, and French fries” (op. cit., p68).

Wendy Shanker brilliantly illustrates how counterproductive being bombarded with unsolicited cautionary advice at every turn is, fostering a fatalistic mentality I fully relate to: “(…) my grandpa had diabetes, I’m gonna get diabetes, screw it, if I’m going to get diabetes, I’m going to eat that Danish RIGHT NOW!” (op. cit., p76, emphasis in original).

In Bad Food Britain Joanna Blythman speculates on the roots of the British aversion to making a fuss about food: “Religion may play its part in the form of a Protestant work ethic which spawned a breed that would rather build an empire or factory than waste hours preparing and eating food; a peculiarly Anglo-Saxon form of Puritanism which holds that it is immoral to enjoy or cherish food too much, parsimony and abstinence being the higher goals” (ppxiii-xiv).

She pinpoints one relatively recent aspect of our eating culture, which may help to explain why our children are growing up slightly heavier than before (although once again the snobbish tone defaces the argument): “The one area where British restaurants really do push the boat out for their consumers is children’s food. Britain is unique in Europe in that it likes to make a fuss of children by offering them an especially bad menu. A separate ‘children’s menu’ is an alien concept in any other country except the US. Restaurateurs elsewhere take the attitude that children will eat the same sort of food as adults, the only concessions being that dishes may be offered in smaller portions, or produced more promptly to pre-empt outbursts from hungry toddlers. Foreign restaurateurs do not live in fear of hysterical children throwing tantrums in the dining room because they can count on the fact that the children have been socialised at home by family meals and can usually be relied upon to sit round a table and eat alongside others. Britain, on the other hand, believes that a dining room is a hostile and foreign environment for a child, a potential war zone. Before contemplating a restaurant visit with their children, the British seem to believe that children must be pacified with a distinct repertoire of ‘child-friendly’ foods (for which read ‘junk’) and bribed with free, non-food gifts. Otherwise, how else can they be expected to sit through an exclusively adult dining experience that is widely considered to be intolerable for a British child? Viewed from abroad, when it comes to food Britain’s treatment of children amounts to neglect, a national embarrassment, even to the British” (Blythman, op. cit., pp64-5).

When I was 14 I travelled abroad for the first time in my life on a school language-learning exchange to our twin town in Germany. Having overcome my air sickness during the second flight, I was ravenous. When we were bundled off the coach for a meal at long last we were instructed to take a seat whilst the teachers took our orders and then queued for our burger and chips. I was fascinated by the sheer novelty of it, the industrial efficiency and speed of the service, my own little tray, the individual components neatly separated in little boxes, local and American ex-pat teenagers congregated in their scruffy jeans around tables chatting quite at home. This was my first taste of McDonalds. It was 1979. Prior to that, I dimly recall a sightseeing trip to London with my Father. Every evening we would drop in at the Kentucky Fried Chicken at Piccadilly Circus. Again it was the rupture with routine that made it stick in my mind. At home we never ate out, nor did anyone we knew (except the occasional anniversary dinner for my parents, when my brother and I were left in the company of my Granddad). On the way back from a drive round the lochs we might stop at the “chippy” for a fish supper. The proliferation of eateries to suit every budget that stud the city centres would have left me saucer-eyed with amazement.

As to the quality of the staples on these menus, Blythman is scathing: “In 2003, the Parents Jury – a group that campaigns for better children’s food – surveyed the food in British restaurants that commonly serve to children, based on responses from 1,400 parents. The judging panel concluded that, because the standard was so low, the idea of children’s menus should be done away with altogether. The children’s menu in one prominent chain was summarised by a judge as follows: ‘No fresh food. Everything is out of the freezer and into the fryer or microwave. I bet they haven’t got a chopping board in the kitchen’. The Parents Jury went on to highlight one typical children’s menu with a prehistoric dinosaur theme. It consisted of heavily processed foods: ‘Raptor hot dog’, ‘Jungle chicken’, ‘Jurassic sausages’, ‘Bronto burger’, ‘T-ex pizzas’ and ‘Big Dino breakfast’. All these were served with chips and a refreshing ice lolly with ‘fruit flavour’. To make the package more attractive, it was available in a larger or super-size version for 50 pence extra. Good children who finished up this assembly were rewarded with a free lollipop. A subsequent survey of 141 children’s meals served in cafés and restaurants in London found that every one failed to meet even the basic nutritional standards set down for school meals” (Blythman, op. cit., p66).

Having been brought up on such titbits: “Mainstream Britain feels comfortable with bad food, and the routine consumption of junk is an entrenched British habit. A ‘no-nonsense’ pragmatic approach to food is taken as a sign of normality and solid, feet-on-the-ground Britishness” (Blythman, op. cit., p117).

The ever-judicious and compassionate Millman does not shy away from lifting the lid on how inequality skews life chances (by which neither she nor I mean to suggest that fat is incompatible with either happiness, well-being or wealth; I for one would only look slim in a fairground Hall of Mirrors, am far from uneducated or poorly paid and quite content): “(…) in America obesity is correlated with poverty: it is many times more prevalent among the poor than the rich and is associated with downward mobility. As a ‘lifestyle’ problem it is easy to see why obesity is a product of poverty: inexpensive convenience foods are the most fattening, and we have to be relatively wealthy to eat a high-protein diet or have the time and resources to cook healthy low-calorie meals. Access to pleasant physical exercise and athletic activities is increasingly expensive. As Overeaters Anonymous illustrates, eating is often used to dull the pain and soothe the frustrations of difficult life circumstances. While financially poor overweight people might logically be seen as the victims of social conditions that make a healthy lifestyle improbable, instead they are blamed for driving up the cost of health care and using up too many resources. It is a case of blaming the victim” (op. cit., p89).

Blythman too explores the link in the popular imagination between eating patterns and place in the social pecking order: “In Britain, your class is not just shown by what foods you eat but where you shop for them. The discerning and moneyed of the South favour the posh person’s grocer – Waitrose. Nationwide, the bourgeoisie settles for Sainsbury’s along with the more blue collar Tesco, while the working classes go for Morrison’s, Asda or Co-op, or alternatively they flock to foreign discount stores such as Aldi and Lidl because they seem to sell much the same as the smarter-looking chains, but at a much lower price. In Britain, where people do their food shopping says more about their class than almost any other social indicator.

The charity Barnardo’s showed just how polarised Britain’s attitudes to food are when its researchers showed two photographs to children of mixed ages – one showing burger and chips with cola, the other showing a healthy meal featuring an open sandwich, salad vegetables, fruit and milk – and asked them to describe the sort of person of their age who would eat each meal. Irrespective of their geographical background, the children found it hard to believe that anyone their age would go for the healthy meal. If such a person did exist, the children thought that ‘only a posh person would eat such a posh meal’ and that she would be a ‘sporty girl’, a ‘goody-goody’ who lived in a ‘posh house’, possibly, as one respondent suggested, a ‘big house near David Beckham’. Her parents were described as rich, but very strict and health conscious people, who would work in an office and eat similarly healthy food (…) Their stereotyped picture of the consumer eating the burger meal was no less revealing: a ‘burger boy’ was associated with poverty, laziness, junk food and anti-social behaviour. He was characterised as living in a ‘scruffy and messy’ house, with parents who ‘could not be bothered to cook proper food’, and who might be ‘drug addicts, unemployed or working at Burger King’.

In Britain, there does not seem to be any common territory where good food is every citizen’s birthright. On the contrary, good food is something you find in intimidating, stiff-backed, country house, ‘fine dining’ restaurants with incomprehensible French menus that are playing at being mini-Bridesheads. Good food is something you buy in prestigious shops like Harrods or up-market delicatessens, where the very name on the bag radiates cachet. A liking for good food instantly makes you not just any old member of the public with a reasonable appetite, but a ‘gastronome’, a ‘foodie’, an ‘epicurean’, a ‘hedonist’ or, at any rate, somewhat unusual” (Blythman, op. cit., pp120-2).

If we are to convince the world that we are not a bunch of losers and saddos who withdraw into our cocoon to stuff ourselves with toffee popcorn we clearly have our work cut out for us.

She also arrives at a similar conclusion (for once I approve of her reasoning): “The government, along with the food and soft drink industry, likes to divert discussions about health and obesity away from food on to physical activity. Any government that starts taking a serious look at the ways in which the fast-food industry keeps the population in thrall to its products is going to have large companies breathing down its neck in an unnerving manner. Rather than restrict the industry’s room for manoeuvre in any significant way, they find it more expedient to dole out sanctimonious, ‘get fit’ advice: telling people to be active costs the government nothing; manufacturers of sports equipment are thrilled as sales soar; and fitness centres will sign up legions of fretful fatties.

No one can disagree with the idea that it’s good to be active. It shifts the burden of Britain’s ever-growing bulk back into the zone of personal responsibility and well away from the state and its obligations to create an environment in which any interested, motivated citizen has a chance of eating well and sticking to it without being constantly undermined at every turn. Instead of clipping the food industry’s wings, politicians now seek refuge in the sport angle on obesity because they lack the principles and bottle to stand up to big food corporations” (Blythman, op. cit., pp256-7).

If we really want sanity to be our guiding principle when it comes to feeding our children we would be well-advised to translate Hillel Schwartz’s Utopian musing into practical policy in the here and now: “In a fat society, children would be fed and fed well when hungry. When they were fed, they would be satisfied, because there would be no snares laid around food. Feeding would be calm and loving, always sufficient, never forced. Children as they grew into adolescents would acquire no eating disorders, since fat people and thin people would be on equal terms and there would be none of that anxious dieting which so often starts off the career of an anorectic or bulimic. No one would be obsessed with food because all people would have the opportunity to be powerful and expressive beyond the dining table” (op. cit., pp324-5).

The gleaming polished granite floor surfaces, in layers as thin as the stone can be sliced, conceals the less glamorous concrete. On rainy days I pick my way across it even in my sensible shoes to prevent the indignity of slipping and, horror of horrors, landing on my backside. In this artificial environment, with its duty-frees and window displays of precision water and shockproof watches for the more intrepid traveller (or, more likely, for the class of person who has never muddied their status-symbol green Wellingtons in a puddle let alone a churned up field, but who insist on driving through the tame city streets in a vehicle intended for heather-clad mountainsides, an absurd fantasy of country gentility, the squire sneering down at the peasants in the midst of the glass-fronted office blocks) we are tempted to buy with the lure of freedom, flight, weightlessness, wrenching our bodies from the confines of the dirty soil, heavenward, no responsibilities, no messy complications, leaving everything behind. The airport retailers still cultivate the image of exclusiveness that accrued to this mode of transport in bygone days before cheap charters, no-frills and lager lout stag night trips when the prim stewardess’ accent could cut glass more effectively than any diamond. Luxury items abound, mere utility too vulgar to be vaunted.

My palms sweat, not from the long haul to the gate, but with the anxiety of the next hazard to negotiate: the plastic table. The cramped, curtain-separated discomfort of economy class on the now defunct Sabena used to be alleviated by a menu that included smoked trout starters on the Edinburgh route. The hot meal was usually more than passable and slivers of the finest quality chocolate were served as an accompaniment to the coffee. Now a minute and sullenly stale vacuum-packed cheese roll is considered a gourmet repast, the generosity of the carrier a boast reflected in the slogan “The drinks are on the crew” (hopefully that does not mean that our modest DVT-averting consumption of non-sparkling mineral water is deducted from their wages). Usually, with the last-minute hectic scramble to fling a few spare pairs of full-briefs into the bag, and semi-paranoid check that I haven’t left the passports on the mantelpiece, my departure time governed by the bus timetable as well as the necessity to arrive reasonably early in a bid to secure seats not too near the rear of the cabin with their rigid backs and on-board toilet fragrance, grabbing a snack, let alone eating a proper lunch or dinner does not enter into the equation. Even though it is less than appetising, the once-wilted, but now suspiciously crisp lettuce and obligatory cross-section of greenhouse-produced tomato slapped onto the jaw-workout bread still lurks in the back of my mind as a fall-back. I dread being stuck in the middle (the misery of the armrests digging into my thighs the least of my worries). With the window or aisle there is room to stick your elbows out at least or lean discreetly to one side without flesh awkwardly touching flesh (it has been a good few years since businessmen struck up conversation and insisted on handing me their cards in the forlorn hope that I might relieve the boredom of their lucre-pursuing exile). As it is the primary source of potential embarrassment is not being able to fold down the table without it perching precariously on my belly. I squirm as inconspicuously as possible, pushing myself back into the seat to maximise the gap (there almost always is one, except where the table is faulty, but this does not suffice to quell my fears). Although the table is constructed not to be interfered with by the passenger in front preferring to take forty winks instead of indulging in the more than amply compensated for hospitality and although the sight of a thinning pate looming into view over the salad with the prospect that dandruff might substitute for the shaved Parmesan would be enough to put anyone off their food my thoughts can only focus on whether his sprawl will thrust the plastic tray forward far enough to hamper my movements still further, tipping the plastic cups.

As if the ignominy of being packed in so tight did not constitute a sufficient deterrent to the cuddlier of us, worse is likely to lie in store. According to an article by Ray Massey (Daily Mail, 26th April), Stand up and fasten your seatbelts: “Passengers feeling like sardines as airlines cram them into their seats should be warned. They could soon be standing instead.
Aviation bosses are looking at the possibility of scrapping seats and simply strapping passengers in bolt upright. The aim is to squeeze more than 850 passengers into one superjet.
Those in the ’standing section’ would be propped against a padded backboard and held in place with a harness, according to experts who have seen prototype versions.
It sounds like a cross between a fairground ’wall of death’ and an everyday journey on a busy commuter train. But as economy seats become ever smaller to save space, aviation experts are examining radical ways to fit more passengers on planes”.

Veal crate conditions for cattle class? Such arrangements would initially be confined to short-haul flights: “Experts believe there is no legal barrier to installing standing-room only seats. The US Federal Aviation Administration, for example, does not require a passenger to be in a sitting position for take-off and landing – only secured. Seating must however comply with rules on aisle width and the ease of evacuation in an emergency”. What about the distance between these rows? Would someone of my weight be able to slip between them? Would they have dedicated (segregated) sections for us, screened off from “normal” customers? Would there be a quota restricting how many of us would be admitted on board any given flight? In their quest to break even beleaguered airlines might end up promoting blatant discrimination under the guise of rationality by putting forward the fuel economy argument. Frankly, if safety margins are that tight it does not exactly inspire confidence (what if the plane is made to circle in a holding pattern because of skyside congestion while the gauge creeps toward empty?). I am not advocating waste nor do I believe that our current policy of not taxing kerosene is sustainable environmentally, but meting out further punishment to us fatties provides little more than symbolic satisfaction within a cultural context in which we are regarded with loathing and have to endure enough humiliations as it is.

Not that the aviation industry is alone in weighing up whether to single us out for experiments in differential pricing as Simon Calder’s piece in travel section of The Independent (15th April) concerning the policy adopted by the Ostfriesland Hotel in Norden, The less you weigh, the less you pay. Is this the future of travel? reveals an idea that could well catch on: “‘You don’t check in – you weigh in’. That’s not the hotel’s slogan, but it ought to be. Usually, prices for a hotel are either fixed for the season, or vary according to supply and demand. At the Ostfriesland, though, you pay strictly according to how much you weigh – at a rate of €0.50 (35p) per kilogram per night. A short, slender woman, weighing 53kg (8st 5lb) will pay just €26.50 (£18) [per] night, including breakfast – a bargain for a single room in a three-star hotel. A gentleman of modest stature who tips the scales at 64kg (10st 1lb) would be charged €32 (£23). Double rooms are priced according to combined weight, so a few extra kilos on one partner can be offset by a fellow-traveller”.

The scheme was apparently introduced a month previously and Jürgen Heckroth who runs the hotel may transform it into a permanent feature.

Calder laces his reasoning what he perceives to be amusing: “But most of us are of somewhat fuller figures. Should we be penalised? Yes: from a business perspective it makes perfect sense. Thinner guests will be less tempted to demolish the breakfast buffet in the manner of some enthusiastic eaters. And the lighter the guest, the less wear and tear on the bed (all other things being, er, equal).
A longer-term concern, though, is that the Heckroths enjoy a large number of repeat visitors, and Jürgen is trying to encourage guests to take more care of themselves so their patronage is assured for as long as possible. Indeed, the germ of the idea was a regular visitor, who, each year, grew heavier. ‘Eventually, I told her that if she weighed any more next time, I would charge her extra,’ Jürgen says.
Last summer he drove to the railway station to pick her up (evidently this is a tip-top hotel for service). ‘I could not recognise her,’ he says. ‘She had lost 35kg. At breakfast the next day, she said, ‘I should pay less,’ and I had to agree’.
Now, all guests are invited to weigh in when they arrive, but the process is not compulsory. In recognition that not everyone will feel comfortable with the idea, rates are capped at a maximum corresponding to 74kg per person in a double room, 78kg single.
So who dares to step up to the scales? ‘Mostly wives,’ reports Jürgen. ‘The men tend to be bigger because of all the beer’. Until now, he says, no one has gone on a crash diet in a bid to cut down their bill, but he would be happy for his earnings to fall if it means that his guests are in better shape. The Ostfriesland is a model for persuading people to lead healthier lives”.

Thus Calder assumes that we tubbies all descend on the breakfast buffet salivating with scoff-lust. I for one do not cram in the croissants. Far from stuffing myself with everything from the processed ham to the hard-boiled egg halves, stripping the platters with an efficiency that would put your self-respecting locust to shame, the most I can normally force down in the mornings is two slices of buttered toast or a pastry. It is the milky coffee that sustains me. As for the crass insensitivity of Mr H’s unkind and cutting remark masquerading as concern (which does nothing to dispel the national clichés that have accumulated around the Germans) towards a woman who had by his own admission been a loyal guest and lucrative source of income that would be grounds for me never to darken the doors of his establishment again and to warn everyone in my wide circle of friends and acquaintances to boycott it too. For every one woman who grits her teeth with the determination to shut bullies such as him up by capitulating to his standards of what constitutes an acceptable weight (Mr H having fallen prey to the erroneous belief that fat and fit can only be mutually exclusive concepts), how many slink off in dejection, their remnants of self-esteem in tatters? That wives are the ones to brave the judgement of the scales should hardly be surprising given the culturally-inculcated masochism with which we are encouraged to assess our shortcomings. Still, men are beginning to succumb to the pressure to stay slim as well, with flab deemed the number one threat to career as well as health, sexual allure and happiness.

Calder does point out that Mr H’s fussing over his charges’ well-being has its limits, equally motivated by the cold dictates of commerce: “Curiously, the hotel also offers the ‘Ostfriesian Tea Ceremony’, centred on a sugary brew served with lashings of cream. A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the bill, as the saying nearly goes. I hope guests are not weighed as they check out”. Let me mention in passing that the natives of Ostfriesland occupy an analogous position in German humour to the Irish in the cruel jokes that stereotype them as not being the sharpest tools in the box…

Calder allows his imagination to take flight on the question of other areas in which this principle could be applied: “Elsewhere in the travel industry, there is plenty of scope to employ the technique. When I travel on an overstuffed Nicaraguan bus or Indian train, I take up more room (78kg, since you ask, at least before my daily cup of Ostfriesian tea) than the locals; surely I should pay a higher fare. Some airlines in the US already penalise heavier passengers; Southwest insists that ‘customers of size’ who are unable to lower the armrests between seats are obliged to buy a second ticket (the fare is refunded if the aircraft is not full when it takes off).
For safety, it makes sense for the flight crew to know the total weight of everyone on board; indeed, the loss of a small commuter plane in the US was partly attributed to insufficient allowance being made for the weight of the passengers. At Puerto Obaldia in Panama, the flight to the capital uses a tiny aircraft; no one is allowed on board until they have been weighed (and, if necessary, paid a paunch premium).
Financially, too, there is a strong case for weighing passengers as well as their luggage: heavier people use more fuel. Europe’s biggest no-frills airline, Ryanair, already charges for checked-in luggage – can it be long before the carrier starts looking at passengers’ personal excess baggage?
Scales at check-in are unlikely. Instead, passengers will be discreetly asked their weight. And in case anyone understates the true figure, air safety regulations – in the US at least – insist an extra 10lb be added”.

Whilst queuing for the security check in Waffleland’s main airport we used to be greeted by a poster depicting a cartoon strip character, as part of a series designed to inspire momentary reflection on the absurdities of life, shrugging at the thought that if a passenger of 70 kilos checks in a suitcase of 30kg in economy, he is charged for the excess, but his fellow passenger of a more substantial 120kg with a suitcase of 15kg would not be. The intent, however, was humorous, a bit of “harmless” fun. If such deliberations take a more serious turn we will be shamed yet again into justifying our existence, apologising for the affront we have caused by “refusing” to conform, ostracised, running the gauntlet of sniggers and pointing fingers. A very effective way of purging the lounges of the “imperfect”, whose carnality might cause offence to those refined and delicate souls who faint at the sight of the merest drizzle of cream sauce on their poached salmon. Not only will the definition of “normality” be placed in the hands of insurance companies (which, after all, have a vested interest in keeping “ideal” weights unrealistically low so that they can rake more in by slapping on huge excess charges for the heftier), but are airlines also to be stigmatise us for our bulk?

Personally, I have never seen the attraction in basting on a beach, not even in the days when a glimpse of my figure was more likely to elicit approval rather than scorn. If I were to venture onto the sands nowadays, I would probably, out of a sense of self-preservation, cover up more flesh than the most repressed of Victorian matrons. I prefer the windswept slopes of my home with its landscapes incomparable for photography, accessible only by hiking. In a couple of weeks I will be taking refuge in a self-catering cottage on the shores of that most beautiful of lochs. However, the restrictions on my movements imposed by public ridicule or the fear of it (cutting comments about appearance are considered perfectly acceptable, after all) already amount to a capitulation to the halfwits who can only bolster their own feelings of worth at someone else’s expense. Is fat apartheid the future we can look forward to? Will we be banished from all resorts except those specifically set aside for us (no doubt with fast food outlets in abundance)? If this notion appears fanciful, take a look at the housing segregation that has already taken root so deep that we fail to even notice it. If prices are to be inflated to penalise us to the extent that we can no longer afford to go on holiday our mobility will be curtailed in ways we could not have envisaged. If obesity is the new determinant of social standing it is time we engaged in a little class warfare.