There was a fashion in the early 1980s to label those who argued that junk food was making us ill and that we needed to stop eating so much of it "food Leninists". I admit to having been thus branded, and to having worn the tag as a badge of honour, although I regret having inflicted culinary experiments with puritan pulses and, worse still, sugar-free cake, on friends and acquaintances.
Now it seems the establishment shorthand for campaigners who want to change the nation's diet - overheard after a national consumer council seminar on food policy last week - has been upgraded: we have progressed from Leninists to Stalinists. That we should no longer be dismissed as mere misguided ideologues but castigated as full-blown tedious tyrants is very gratifying and perhaps a sign of moral panic. We seem to be winning the argument. After all, what is a poor industry to do when even the Republican president of the US aligns himself with the totalitarian tendency?
Junk food, in case you have not yet heard, is the new tobacco. In a startling address to the nation last weekend, President Bush declared a war on fat and urged Americans to eat fewer fatty foods and more fruit and vegetables while taking more exercise. He was responding to the crisis of obesity in the US.
Congress is considering putting health warnings similar to those on cigarette packets on foods high in fat and salt and imposing a tax on junk food which is aimed at children.
Last month a New York columnist Meredith Berkman launched a $50m class-action lawsuit against a food manufacturer for doubling the fat content of what purported to be a low-fat snack. Not expecting to win, Berkman filed her suit with delicious irony, claiming damages for "emotional distress" for all those who got fat or had to spend extra time at the gym.
Only in America, except that the industry lobby in the UK, the food and drink manufacturers' association, doesn't think this funny, and is seriously worried about the implications. The Royal College of Paediatrics has predicted a similar epidemic of obesity here. Type 2 diabetes, the sort caused by diet and usually found only in adults, is now being seen in children.
As the case against junk food grows, we can enjoy looking out for some of the contortions the tobacco industry practised in an effort to fight off the inevitable.
First will be the refusal to acknowledge that food and health are directly related. (Remember how long cigarette companies denied that there was a proven causal link between tobacco and disease?) The medical consensus now is that diet, and specifically a diet high in fats, sugars and salt, plays a major part in cardiovascular disease, including coronary heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity and tooth decay.
The industry line is that these are complex, multifactoral diseases, and that you cannot point the finger at any one factor. Our sedentary lifestyles and the breakdown of traditional patterns of eating are just as much to blame as any particular food.
We Stalinists have no problem with this. We'd love to renationalise those school playing fields so casually sold off, so that children could have a chance to exercise properly. But the food industry may find it has some rather more hardline opposition to deal with.
The Wanless report on the NHS, commissioned by the Treasury, calculated the cost to the health service each year of diet-related diseases: diabetes £1.3bn, coronary heart disease £2.4bn, cancer £2.5bn.
Health economists are becoming clearer about how to allocate this financial burden. They say, for example, that 30% of the risk factors in heart disease and cancer can be attributed to diet. Imagine: 30% of the NHS bill for diet-related diseases equals £3-4bn a year, and Gordon Brown is on the case. No wonder the junk food manufacturers are worried.
Listen out also for the Marie Antoinette line of counter attack - what we eat is a matter of free choice or, to paraphrase, "let them eat rubbish".
Professor Tim Lang of Thames Valley university, widely credited with being the original food Leninist, has done extensive work on what influences people's choices in food. He points out that most of the £600m spent on advertising food in the UK each year promotes snacks, sweets and fatty foods. Children are bombarded with messages promoting unhealthy "free" choices.
The Good Food Foundation has asked children what they think of as cooking skills. These are their answers: opening a sandwich (36%), making toast (31%), opening a cereal pack (20%), cooking chips (11%). If that's free choice, wouldn't you be a Stalinist?
felicity.lawrence@guardian. co.uk
