LOW-FAT crisps why? It is a concept as pointless as alcohol-free beer or fizz-free champagne. A crisp without fat is salt `n' vinegar-flavoured cardboard. Yet that mightiest of our snack makers, Walker's, is yielding to the health fascists and reducing the saturated fat in their products by 70 per cent.

Salt will also be reduced to less than half a gram per bag - the same as a slice of bread.

The thirst-inducing equation of which the full-fat, full-salt crisp is such an important component - munch, slurp of lager, munch, slurp of lager - will surely never work in the same way. A nation mourns.

Hot on the heels of this bombshell comes the "Be Treatwise" campaign from the grandly named Biscuit, Cake, Chocolate And Confectionery Association. The likes of Cadbury's and Mars are putting labels on their products urging us to get to know our GDAs. Erm, what? This new helping of pseudo-science is our "guideline daily amount".

I tried to find out my GDA, but the Be Treatwise website is still under construction. But I think I could take a fair stab at it. If I eat a Mars bars for breakfast, lunch and dinner, I'm busting by GDA and, quite probably, my trouser waistband, too. Whereas a Mars a day may help me work, rest and play, and probably won't kill me.

But do we need such nannying advice? We cheered Jamie Oliver as he saved the nation's blooming youth from turkey twizzlers, but we surely don't want choc manufacturers flogging us their wares while telling us "Steady on, though."

Reasonable

Children, believing themselves to be immortal, will ignore the Be Treatwise message. Adults, on the reasonable basis that it is no one's business but their own if they scoff a family size Fruit And Nut while watching EastEnders, will do likewise.

We have been here before, of course. For many a year, cigarette packets have carried ever more stark health warnings. Did anyone ever stop smoking because of these warnings? Is it possible anyone ever reached for a packet of fags, read the warning and realised: "Crikey, these things are bad for me! I thought they had vitamins in them"?

People make their own choices in life, and no amount of hectoring will stop that. Take Jack Taylor, whose funeral took place yesterday. A celebrated figure in Bradford, he weighed 50st - so big that cars would crash when their drivers caught sight of this man-mountain.

If there had been a health warning on the side of any one of the 15 tandooris a day he enjoyed, would he have stayed his eager fork? Not chuffing likely.

We should celebrate our indulgences, and trust to people's good sense. All power to the arm of chef Antony Worrall Thompson, pilloried for producing the unhealthiest recipe ever - Snickers pie. Containing five Snickers bars, puff pastry, mascarpone and even more sugar, a single slice contains at least 1,250 calories.

The chef should have let his recipe speak for itself ... a totem to gluttony, a heart attack on a plate. Instead, he felt moved to point out that this dessert should not be eaten every day. Doh! We knew that! Don't conspire with the "Be Treatwise" brigade by making our pleasures guilty.

Today, GDAs. Tomorrow, fun quotas and laughing rations.

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