It was of some surprise last Sunday, to read in a respected broadsheet newspaper, a major article attacking the Governments (some would say weak?) attempts to curtail the food industry’s continued flooding of Britain with unnecessarily over-sugared food and drink.

It is hardly the responsible action of a major quality newspaper, to publish a destructive subversive opinion, at a critical stage, when the Food industry in England is indeed failing to meet sugar reduction targets, is it?

The piece was an aggressive unveiled attack on what was called the ‘public health lobby’ and which was accused no less, of being ‘a tyranny that kills consumer choice’, while criticising the entire food industry for abandoning the usual laws of supply & demand by deciding to reject consumer preferences to comply with government diktat.

So basically, it has urged suppliers to operate as a free market alternative to the ‘nanny state’, and continue product innovation driven solely by customer demand, hence enduring with reliance on people making ‘wise or unwise’ choices. It describes brands who have ignored the call for change as “heroic”, while demeaning those who have reduced sugar in their products, as pathetic and cringing. It called it ‘shameful’ what’s happening in the confectionary and soft drinks market – reducing sugar in products.

It ends by opinionating about those supporting a sugar-reduction target, that “their well-meaning concern for other people’s health has become pure intolerance”.

This bit of rubbish was an idiotic tirade by an apparent idiot, appealing to the similarly afflicted, who clearly can’t make sensible choices himself (as shown by him taking up smoking in an age when its deadly health risks have been in the public domain for half a century, despite the tobacco industry’s despicable lying cover-up – how many has he himself damaged by passive smoking, one wonders?).

He clearly is a know-all, who writes a lot about all and sundry, but either knows little or understands nothing. Just like the tobacco scum who have destroyed countless families in this Country over many decades, the food industry has irresponsibly been doing exactly the same thing, for exactly the same reason, a shed load of dirty money.

The dire consequences can go hang as profits are the only thing that counts, and it is only by attacking those, that they will be discouraged from formulating products that feed peoples inherent addiction to high calorie food.

This Mr Radical, clearly is too hard-nosed and uncaring, to have noticed the epidemic of obesity wreaking the lives of even our youngest children as well the adults making their ‘choices’ for them.

Just like the tobacco lobbyists of old, this columnist will need a strong stomach to withstand his own conscience.

Many many thousands of column inches have been written about the obesity crisis that is dragging Britain into the abyss, so nothing more needs to be said about it here.

The current state of play is that the Out-Of-Home (OOH) sector providing food and drink to us consumers in the general public, is playing fast and loose with the soft-glove attempts by the authorities to see reduction of sugar in products [a wall of silence was met when the programme was launched]. The Public Health England (PHE) first report in May is light on some statistics due to lack of cooperation, but nevertheless is a damning indictment of the industry as a whole – little attempt has been made [only yoghurts, cereals and sweet spreads hit the 5% sugar reduction target]. There is one outcome that says it all though – ‘of the top 20 brands responsible for the greatest amount of sugar, 50% made NO CHANGE, 33% cut some sugar, and 12% ADDED MORE SUGAR’.

You see their attitude is “Stuff You mate”

[The argument is now well won, that says that the time has definitely come for the Government to up the ante, and resort to tough-guy measures against the recalcitrant food mob and in particular the junk and fast-food pushers – Mr Nice-Guy just doesn’t work, does it?]