An epidemic is a rapidly-spreading disease. You can have an epidemic of flu. You can have an epidemic of Shigella dysentery. You can have an epidemic of Ebola.

You can't get much of an epidemic out of E. coli O157 because it's food borne. It's not too easy to transmit that directly between people. Put another way, it's very easy to avoid transmission.

So if it's an epidemic you have to be able to catch it and spread it to others. Now, I've hung around with some seriously fat blokes and I show no signs of bursting buttons or straining belt. That's because obesity is not catching. There is no such thing as an 'obesity epidemic'.

It's not connected to how rich you are either. It is entirely down to how much you eat vs. how much you do. That's really all there is to it. Therefore, in low income areas, you'd expect people to be thin because a) they don't have money to splurge on pies and b) they'll be working really hard to make enough to live. You'd expect fat rich people because a) they can afford double helpings of pie and b) they don't have to work so hard. Which is exactly the opposite of what the fat police are claiming.

"These areas show what happens in poor areas when you have a generation of young parents who don't know how to cook because there was no domestic science taught at school," Mr Fry said.

"In many of these cases we are talking about single mothers trying to live on low incomes by using cheap convenience foods."

Don't know how to cook because they weren't taught in school? Didn't their parents give them any sort of clue in that regard? Did Delia Smith write all those books in vain? Second hand shops are full of cookery books.

As to the cheap convenience foods - the clue is in the name. Convenience. The idea behind those foods was that where a single person - or a couple where both partners work - they'll sometimes get home too tired to cook anything. When they get home they can bung something in the microwave. The 'convenience' was not intended to mean 'home all day but can't be arsed, so have a microwaved burger and some microwaved chips then sit in front of the playstation and shut up'.

I bought a marked-down lettuce in Tesco today for 11p. It'll last a couple of days before the remnants get too floppy to eat and end up in the compost. I bought a small pack of smoked wild Alaskan salmon for four quid. Extravagant but I don't buy it often and as there's just me I can afford a small pack of luxury once in a while. I bought a big pack of king prawns for three quid. There are cheaper options and I often buy them, but today I fancied something a bit posh and it's too hot for cooked stuff. So let's see, that's seven pounds and eleven pence. Put with cucumber, peppers, cheese that was already in the fridge, home-made salad dressing and it's a meal I couldn't finish. I have half left so I can have it again tomorrow for lunch. And that's eating the posh stuff. Oh, and I didn't get a single class of domestic science in school. I did woodwork and metalwork instead. The funny thing is, I can use a cooker but I have no clue how to build one.

Two posh meals for seven quid. I've done better - I once picked up a whole dressed crab in Tesco for seven pence. The trick is to get there just as the fish counter or meat counter is closing and snap up the stuff they can't put back on the counter tomorrow. The mark-downs are amazing. There are also cheaper versions of all the posh foods - try mackerel for some really cheap fish, and frying steak rather than sirloin.

So it has nothing to do with the 'cheapness' of the convenience foods. It has everything to do with being idle layabouts who'd rather put a box in a microwave than peel an onion or chop some mushrooms. Is that aspect addressed? Surprisingly enough, it's not even mentioned.

Can't we dispel this myth that the boxed foods are cheap? Most of the contents of those boxes consist of air. You pay for the processing and the packaging. You can make most of it yourself more cheaply. The first time you make your own curry it looks expensive but you then have the spices already for the next time. The best way to make pizza is to buy the pizza bases cheap, and freeze them. A tube of tomato puree keeps for ages, cheese is cheap, pepperoni can be bought in little packets, it takes no time at all to fry up some cheap chicken bits (don't buy the bits, buy a piece and chop it up, unless you like paying someone else to do something that takes a couple of minutes). And you can grow your own fresh herbs and even tomatoes in a pot on the windowsill. All you have to do is water them.

Convenience foods are not the cheap option. They are the convenient option. Throwing money at people too lazy to cook won't make them cook. They'll just buy more frozen chips and pies. Along with more cigarettes and booze. Five quid or so for twenty fags, over a pound a can for Special Brew, and you expect me to believe they 'can't afford good food'? Crap. They can't be bothered preparing it. Giving them more free cash will not change that.

I have experienced zero money. I've been down to the level of eating roadkill (tips: Don't bother with crow. Yeuk. Rabbits are a lucky find. Hedgehogs, wrap them in mud and leave them in the fire until the mud dries hard and cracks. It takes all the spines out). Having no money didn't make me fat. It had rather the opposite effect. It didn't make me smoke more - you won't believe how thin you can make a roll-up when you have to spin out the occasional half-ounce. It didn't make me drink at all. I've never been so sober for so long.

So what did being skint do to me? It made me work. It made me work to get out of there and the memory of it keeps me working so I won't have to go back there. There is no correlation between being poor and being fat. There is no correlation between being poor and smoking and drinking like it's going out of style.

There is a very big correlation between all three things and paying people to stay home and do nothing.

You really want to stop the obesity 'epidemic'? Stop paying people to get fat.

Instead, we have this from one Colin Waine:

He urged ministers to consider radical options to tackle obesity levels via higher taxes on foods with high levels of fat or salt.

Tax on food. Oh, that'll help. I'll just buy the low salt option and a bag of salt. So will everyone else. Three kilos of salt cost just over a pound and it keeps for ever. In fact, I'd better stock up in case they tax that too. I sense a black market in salt approaching.

And let's not forget the NHS, which we are to pay for but must never use:

The problem is expected to cripple NHS resources, with spending linked to obesity predicted to triple in less than a decade, and to rise sevenfold by 2050.

That's a future in which every single person in the country looks like Bernard Manning. We won't have to worry about rising sea levels. We'll have to worry about the country sinking under the weight. Is that really likely? Really? When nobody is smoking or drinking and we're all living on tofu and mung beans, what will the NHS do then?

Scaremongering. They've dealt with smokers, drinkers are under the thumb and now it's the turn of anyone who eats. A breathing tax is surely on the way, based on CO2 emissions every time you exhale.

The last paragraph of the article says it all:

Gillian Merron, the public health minister, said the health of the nation was improving by many measures, with increased life expectancy and reduced deaths from smoking but that many areas needed to do more to tackle some "unacceptable" variations.

Unacceptable variations. Some people are not conforming to the grey uniformity this vicious Righteous tart wants. We are not yet the Borg but we're on the way. She reveals the true nature of all these 'health directives' in those two words.

It's not about health. It never was. It is, and always was, about control. Control for the sake of control. Setting limits and forcing people to follow them for no other reason than that they can. There is no logic or research behind any of those recommended daily allowances. They are a means of control. That's it. There is no reason for this control other than the control itself. Power for its own sake.

Ingsoc are here, and have been for some time. They are just becoming a little more obvious than they used to be.