h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I recently saw a child of around ten or eleven who was sufficiently overweight as to cause me real alarm. Getting out of the swimming pool, he looked like a beached seal or some such. Pendulous stomach, love handles overhanging his shorts, the lot. What kind of parent allows their child to get into that kind of state? Is it due to the decline of home economics in schools? Or is it just that people don't have time any more? It can't be that: cooking a reasonably healthy meal takes less time than popping out to the Colonel's for a bargain bucket, and costs less. I think it might be the gustatorial equivalent of "spare the rod and spoil the child."

My kids like pizza - so do we - but they don't get it every day. They get free access to as much fruit as they want (except bananas, which have an unfortunate effect on Peter, so he's rationed to half per day). We never eat at McDreadful's or Kentucky Fried Rat, pizzas usually come from the Express not the Hut, and we don't have chips more than once or twice a month. We have a varied diet, thanks to my wonderful wife, in which things like tuna, pulses and tomato feature prominently.

And if you don't like what's on offer, it's vegemite sandwiches. Which never killed anyone.

One thing, though: can the DSS afford for people not to drop dead of heart attacks? Since cholesterol poisoning looks likely to be the principal cause of death for my generation, maybe it'll allow governments ot get away with cocking up pensions for the last twenty years. Maybe that's why they do nothing about it.