Column: No getting around the problem that chocolate tastes better than a salad

It’s part of their forthcoming 10-Year Health Plan, so it might not be this summer we’re ready for, but watch out 2035.

It’s a serious issue. It’s estimated that 64 per cent of adults in England are overweight or obese.

Those people online who spend their time saying the UK is full will soon have a point if we all keeping getting wider.

The Government plan includes getting supermarkets and restaurants to help us cut 50 calories out of our diet.

It can be hard to imagine what 50 calories is like in actual food. It’s just over half an apple, one medium carrot or one cup of raw spinach. If the Government wants me to forgo eating a cup of raw spinach, I’m more than willing to help out.

I can already envision how it is easier for a restaurant to do that. If they swipe the plates away before you’ve finished all of the dessert they’ll hit the target.

The supermarkets will have find other ways of cutting our caloric intake. They’re being asked to ‘make the healthy choice the easy choice’. We all know that shops offer treats like chocolate bars while you’re queuing at the tills. All it takes is a simple thought of, “Go on than, I’ll have a Twix,” to add a few hundred calories to your day.

If you legally forced the supermarkets to replace the chocolate bars with fruit I’m not sure that would make a huge difference. I already know where the fruit aisle is. My BMI isn’t wayward because I can’t track down the apples.

They can’t fix it with something like a two-for-one deal on fruit and veg because that would involve people buying more. Just half an apple is 50 calories. They’d have to invent the half-for-a quarter deal, which would work but would require shoppers do to more maths than Rachel Riley.

The problem is that chocolate tastes better than a salad. I know there’s be some enthusiast who has just started a weight-loss plan who’ll lecture anyone who will listen on how tasty a salad can be but we all know the truth.

From the point of view of the food industry, we’re consumers so they want us to consume.

Science has been used to make these foods so desirable and moreish that we consume more and the food industry achieves its goal.

Until that link is broken, moving things around the supermarket won’t have that much impact.