Sugar the new smoking as attentions turn to food

SUGAR is apparently the new tobacco, killing us through an epidemic of obesity and diabetes. An expert on the radio was complaining about food companies "stuffing" their products with sugar. He is probably right. But we all use the same shops, with access to the same foods, yet half the population manages to stay at a healthy weight. Stuffing food with sugar is only part of the problem. The other part is stuffing your face with food.

BANKS are developing technology to update the cheque process. Instead of waiting for cheques to arrive, banks may soon accept an image of the cheque snapped on your smartphone. Any chance of a photo of a fiver becoming legal tender? Thought not.

THE whole issue of using photos of cheques instead of real cheques somehow reminded me of the Goon Show in the 1950s when the Goons kept cool in a heat wave by surrounding themselves with small pieces of paper, each bearing the pencilled word: "Ice". The fact that people roared with laughter tells you a lot about the 1950s.

QUANGO-bashing can be fun but Nice, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, was needlessly pilloried after giving some kindly, common-sense advice to people whose nearest and dearest are trying to lose weight. We have all seen would-be dieters being offered chocolates or cream cakes by friends. As Nice puts it, this is "neither helpful nor a joke." Damn right. And even worse are those smokers who deliberately offer fags to friends who are desperately trying to quit. If they want to jump off a cliff, it's their own business. Why do they feel the need to take someone else with them?

ONE of the most endearing New Year images was Pope Francis in Rome with a cute little lamb draped around his shoulders at a nativity scene. Hard to believe that less than a year ago the Catholic Church was led by stern, unsmiling Pope Benedict, once known as "God's Rottweiler". Any lamb would run a mile.

THE march of technology. Fifteen years ago we bought the last word in televisions. It was one of those huge silver things that took up half the lounge. It had barely been delivered than it became obsolete, thanks to a new generation of flatscreens. I held out until last week when we finally bought a 40-inch flatscreen. And the day after I ordered it, Samsung unveiled the latest bendy-screen technology which makes our new telly instantly obsolete. At our local tip there is a forlorn pile of old silver tellies. How long before it vanishes under a new pile of cast-out flatscreens?

VIVIANE Reding, vice-president of the European Commission is one of those alarmingly powerful Euro-creations, half-way between politician and bureaucrat who, were it not for the EU, would be performing her public duty as an MP in her native Luxembourg. Instead, as a mover and shaker in Brussels, she is working fervently to turn Europe into a single state and is in a position to lecture Britain on our migration policy. Just pause to consider this. When we joined the Common Market, did anyone ever mention the possibility of a mighty maritime power like the United Kingdom being lectured by political pygmies from a landlocked mini-state which has a population about half that of Birmingham? Reding says the UK government's attempt to control the influx of migrants is "destroying the future of its people." It is bunkum but let her rant. For the more that Euro-zealots like Ms Reding lecture us, the more we begin to ask in whose name and by whose authority do they hold power? And the more we question, the more we realise we could run our own affairs much better.

A READER points out that there's even a European Commission regulation to cover the flushing of toilets and urinals. Don't mention the water-loo.