The Department of Health published its 'Call to action on obesity' last week at a time when the Government desperately needed some well-founded, popular policies to counter the Liam Fox/Adam Werrity farce.
Unfortunately, 'Healthy Lives, Healthy People' - a 'national ambition' rather than a strategy - immediately drew derision and hollow laughter from food campaigners and the medical profession.
For a start, the gimmicky line that the nation needs to eat five billion fewer calories a day - the equivalent of 16.9 million cheeseburgers covering 20 football pitches - is meaningless nonsense.
As Professor Terence Stephenson, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, points out, this 'is actually peanuts. 16 dry roasted peanuts per person, per day, to be precise.'
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