Why Mary Berry was right: bin the deep fat fryer

I don't have a lot of time for Gregg Wallace. I've always questioned his status as a judge on Masterchef based on his credentials of a) eating out a lot, and b) having been a grocer, which makes him an "ingredients expert" as he was once billed.

He's currently on honeymoon with his fourth wife, another young lady he met on Twitter. I'm saying nothing.

Wallace criticised the saintly Mary Berry for saying that no-one needs a deep fat fryer.  He said that Britain frys things, we always have, and there's nothing wrong with chips and spam fritters.

He's a little out-of-touch. Young mums use McCains oven chips. Heating oil to boiling point was never a very safe thing to do. I've never had a deep fat fryer.

On the point that "we've always done it, it's what we do,"  we used to do lots of things that we don't do now.  It doesn't make them right.  Slavery,  sacking women for being pregnant; corporal punishment in schools.

If Gregg casts his mind back to when he was a kid, I'm sure he did enjoy spam fritters and chips. We occasionally had chips cooked in the chip pan, with beef dripping. Delicious. And perfectly fine to have as a treat. Nobody snacked mindlessly between meals or drank sugary fizzy drinks. It was milk or squash in those days. Consequently, hardly anyone was obese. If you watch footage of real people from the 60s and 70s, they were all slim. There was only one boy at my school who was overweight.

It's a different story nowadays as we all know. You only have to see the kids waddling out of school and into the nearest takeaway to surmise that the last thing this lot need is extra chips, even if they are cooked by mum and not by Ronald McDonald.

Lies and Collusion on the Dangers of Sugar

Finally the World Health Organisation admits there is a crisis with sugar and sugar is fuelling the obesity epidemic.

Now health bodies and governments are furiously back peddling after promoting low fat, low carb diets, low salt diets for years whilst turning a blind eye to sugar and the way it was creeping into "low fat" food and drinks in order to make up the taste deficit.

Sugar is not always clearly marked on processed foods and it's found in huge quantities in surprisingly "healthy" places.  Smoothies;  fruit juice;  cereals;  soups.

I find it hard to believe that nutritionists and scientists have only just arrived at this eureka moment.

It doesn't seem like rocket science to me to have in-depth tests comparing diets and results on metabolism and body composition.

But what's been happening is that successive governments have colluded with food manufacturers, and most of our most eminent scientists are actually "sponsored" by the very companies they should be castigating.

Who actually pays for the research? Not the likes of Tate & Lyle or Kelloggs or Coca Cola, because they would lose out.

I can't imagine the current government will make any changes because it will make them too unpopular with the food and drink manufacturers. The good health of the nation is clearly a low priority for this government, having repeatedly wasted opportunities to force the retailers to put up the price of alcohol, sold more cheaply than bottled water, and to follow other countries in the justified demonization of tobacco. My father died horribly of a smoking related disease, so I have no patience with those who drone on about freedom and liberty.

It will take years for the low sugar message to hit home and in the meantime more and more obese people are sucking the NHS dry. Sugar is believed to be as addictive as cocaine, so there seems to be some merit in the argument that they can't help it. But I can't be the only person who thinks it's so sad that today's children will die before their parents.

The political party which dares to make significant changes will win my vote in the next General Election. And we should all put pressure on the parties to make this a key part of their manifesto.

Further reading: today's Daily Mail (7 March): leading cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra confirms that the UK govt is in cohoots with food industry and has had many meetings with the likes of Nando's,  Pepsi, Mars and Tesco.