Childhood Obesity is the latest target of the health police. Seeing limited career opportunities in anti-smoking campaigns a whole new field of meddling opens up if you start to try to dictate what people eat. It seems the new government are continuing with the plan to introduce a new tax on soft drinks and with their latest Childhood Obesity Plan they want to cut sugar in other foods so they probably won’t taste as good.
My view is simple: people should be left to their own devices when it comes to deciding what to eat and drink. Of course schools have a part to play on educating children about nutrition and what constitutes healthy and unhealthy eating. The main job lies with parents and there is a real danger some parents may understandably abrogate responsibility for children’s eating habits if they think the government have now taken that job on. It will be something else to blame the government for. If only the government were spending more there would not be as many overweight children around.
David Nuttall 
Agree totally. Smaller government (in terms of interference) the better. It’s a parents responsibility (which to me is two words – response – ability. i.e the ability to respond) if the government take over the response it gives a parent someone else to blame.
So true! Let’s have less of the “nanny state” and more of the “family nanny culture”!