Jim Hopkins: Plague of puritans declare fatwah on our waistlines

Imagine you're in a village or quaint town centre - the kind we used to have in the good old days when the world was happy and everyone had their own veggie garden and made scones for the neighbours.

See the tram clattering down the centre of the street, trailed by spaghetti-thin ragamuffins catching pennies from the passengers.

Stroll along the gum-free footpath and peer into the enticing interiors of the tiny stores; the fragrant apothecary and the haberdasher and the butcher in his apron tossing sawdust on the floor.

But what's this? A store you haven't seen before, boldly bearing a bright red sign above its little window panes; Welcome to Panics, Epidemics, Hysteria and Angst, proud purveyors of the finest diseases in Christendom.

"Ooooh," you think to yourself. "Diseases, eh? I haven't had one of them for a while. Let's see what they've got."

"Good day, Sir (or Madam)" says the cheerful fellow behind the counter. "What can we interest you in today? Something traditional perhaps, like bubonic plague? Or this one. It's just arrived. Very new! Very popular!"

"What is it?" you nervously inquire.

"Obesity, Sir (or Madam). It's quite the thing! Everybody's getting it. Would you like a free sample?"

"Oh, no," you say, a little alarmed. "I think I'll leave it."

At which point, the retailer suddenly becomes extremely menacing. "I'm sorry, you can't!" he hisses. "It's called life, you see. Something's got to get you and that's that, I'm afraid. You simply have to pick one. So what's it going to be? Bubonic plague, cholera, tuberculosis, diptheria, smallpox, typhoid, bird flu or ... obesity?"

"Outrageous!!!" you'd bellow. "How dare you confront me with such a hideous choice?"

Unless, of course, you've already made up your mind.

Which wouldn't be hard to do.

Let's face it, if the man at Panics, Epidemics, Hysteria and Angst presented any of us with the melancholy options above, we'd very quickly tell him what we wanted.

"Give me obesity!" we'd say - in less than a trice. "That'll do me fine!"

Especially compared to the alternatives, each of which would see us off in less than a week.

But obesity is an entirely different kettle of fish - or should that be fried chicken? Unlike those other unhappy reminders of the good old days, it requires time to work its malevolent spell and also offers the afflicted some gustatory delight along the road to ruin.

It's one of the few allegedly lethal conditions that can be said to taste good.

That might explain why our medical moral guardians are so vociferously denouncing it. Frivolous pleasure doesn't appear to play a large part in the lives of these abstemious souls.

They much prefer the kind of dour report we've seen this week, castigating the rest of us for spending far too much on lollies and far too little on fruit and far too much on fast food and far too little on good food and warning that the inevitable result of this naughtiness will be a disastrous "obesity epidemic".

"Epidemic". Now there's a word guaranteed to hit the front page. Dripping with sinister menace, it instantly rouses fear of ancient plagues and the terrifying prospect of some new menace rampaging through the land.

Except it wouldn't. Not an obesity epidemic, anyway.

The only thing you can say for certain about obesity is that it might shorten the lives of an unknown number of people by an unknown number of years at an unknown point in the future.

And that doth not an "epidemic" make although it may be of considerable financial benefit to other, thinner national superannuitants. Not that we should be canonising the corpulent when they are meant to be condemned.

Look, if the health folk want to fret about fat and fuss about fizz then good luck to them.

Let them stick up big billboards saying "Fat People Die Younger" - if it can be proved they do.

Let them tell the heedless young how "mastication causes bigness".

Let them encourage panic, hysteria and angst with fearful talk of epidemics. But that's it.

Don't tell schools what they can sell in their tuck shops, at least not until your employer, the State, has shown a bit of gumption and decided, in the interests of youthful health and fitness, to scrap all children's programmes (and the ads that accompany them) on its commercial television channels.

Don't blithely propose nationalising industries simply because you don't like what they sell.

Don't hint that you'll use some obscure workplace safety rule next year to rid industry's canteens of evil things like chocolate.

It may be difficult for those fuelled with dietary piety to resist the temptation to restrict or ban the pleasures of others but they should try it nonetheless.

Secure in the knowledge that the "epidemics" of affluence are a mere shadow of their ghastly predecessors and much, much easier to cure, they should, having offered their best and kindest counsel, let us get on and live the flawed, imperfect lives we choose.

The puritan desire to control the affairs of others may begin with food but it surely will not end there. Safe in their official enclaves, our slightly snooty and vehemently virtuous dish-iplinarians will soon find other appetites to suppress.

One hundred and fifty years ago, in his novel Erewhon, Samuel Butler predicted a world where crime would be treated as a sickness and sickness a crime.

Well, that's the world we're living in and will remain so until we realise that bullies, however well-intentioned, are much more dangerous than burgers.