ACCORDING to some new NHS figures, one in five children leaving primary school in Swindon is obese.

Commendably, Swindon Borough Council has various schemes to help tackle the problem, including the Healthy Schools Award, which encourages schools to promote healthy lifestyles.

Of course, there might not be such a problem with childhood obesity if producers and sellers of any food product more processed than a recently dug-up potato were obliged to display a full list of ingredients and nutritional information as prominent as the label naming the product.

The names and details of any sugars, salts or other chemicals might be printed in red, the colour traditionally used to alert people to danger.

Even better, where appropriate, labels might say: “Warning! Unless consumed in tiny quantities, this product will make your child the approximate shape of a beach ball, wreck their knees and shorten their life.”

Another good way of alerting parents to potential issues would be to oblige manufacturers to club together and provide supermarkets with large signs to be displayed in prominent places throughout their stores, detailing any medical problems associated with excessive consumption of certain ingredients.

I don’t suppose the manufacturers and multi-billion pound supermarket chains would be happy about such policies. Indeed, I daresay they’d be so unhappy that they’d refuse to give national politicians and retired national politicians any more lucrative directorships, consultancies and whatnot.

Not that that would influence any of our lawmakers, of course.