Janet Street-Porter: The growth industry that is now obesity

Obesity is big business these days. A conference on the subject this week has generated the usual doom-ridden headlines. Organised by the National Forum on Obesity, speaker after speaker produced scary statistics.

Three out of four adults are overweight (the way our Body Mass Index was previously calculated is now thought to be inaccurate), and the number of children chronically obese so worrying that one speaker proposed the radical solution of taking the worst offenders into care and giving them weight-loss surgery.

Our backsides are spreading so fast that schools will have to order jumbo-sized furniture. And when we snuff it, our coffins will be too big to fit in existing crematorium furnaces. So council tax will rise at the same rate as our chloresterol. It's enough to put you right off that triple-decker sarnie you'd bought for lunch.

But hang on. There's always another, less exciting version of the true picture. Let's take a look at who is behind this plethora of fat-phobic news. The conference (at the Royal College of Physicians) was organised by the National Obesity Forum. The event was fully booked, attended by healthcare professionals and local government officers. All no doubt enjoyed an overnight stay in London and all the drinks and canapés on offer at the end of a gruelling day debating such pressing matters as what role pharmacy – ie drugs – can play in dealing with obese patients.

Over lunch, delegates could wander around the exhibition in the college library and take in the displays mounted by the conferences sponsors – Slim-Fast, and leading pharmaceutical companies including Roche (makers of Xenical, a weight loss drug) Sanofi-aventis (makers of Acomplia) and Abbott (makers of Reductil).

A keynote speech was given by Anne Diamond, who has twice undergone surgery and been given a gastric band to deal with her own weight problem. The problem I have with Anne Diamond, is not the vulgarity of the jewellery she flogs on QVC, but the fact that she once took part in a television series, Celebrity Fit Club, and didn't own up to her fellow team-mates about her gastric band.

Another session was chaired by Dr Hilary Jones, the News of the World columnist and part-time GP – hardly a man on the coal-face of medical research. Other speakers gave lectures sponsored by pharmaceutical companies, demonstrating the unhealthy link between heathcare professionals and the vested interests of the drug industry. The programme was packed with advertising for various weight-loss products, the manufacturers of which supplied free gifts to delegates.

The National Obesity Forum was set up in May 2000, and you could argue that they appear to have been rather unsuccessful in having much impact on the nation's battle with the bulge. Call me cynical, but obesity has become a growth industry in Britain, and the number of so-called experts who get paid to speak at events like this is expanding at about the same rate as the number of consultants employed by this government.

The bottom line is, we eat too much and we exercise too little. Children need to learn about nutrition and cookery as soon as they learn to read. Their parents need to be encouraged and incentivised to learn to cook. It's as simple as that. We don't need potentially addictive drugs or any more statistics. We are fatter than we used to be but it's not the end of civilisation as we know it. The moment I see that drug companies are involved in framing the solution to a social problem, then I'm worried.

* As Jacqui Smith and Boris Johnson compile their shortlists of suitable successors to Sir Ian Blair, they might like to consider how some top coppers conduct their love lives, and perhaps impose a ban on extra-curricular nooky. I was astonished to discover that Michael Todd, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, who some considered would one day be in charge of the Met, cheated on his wife with up to 12 different women over five years, many of whom worked with him and have been offered compassionate leave during the inquest into his death. Boris's past lapses seem piffling in comparison.

Why this £5m butter advert is Rotten to the core

Thirty-one years after the BBC banned his punk anthem "God Save the Queen", the former Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten is starring in his first television commercial, flogging butter and sporting a dazzling array of outfits – from a tweed suit with bow tie and waistcoat to a tartan dressing gown with clashing check pyjamas.

The King of Punk gets chased by a herd of cows in a £5m commercial for Country Life Butter. Rotten is backing Britain, but Dairy Crest, which owns the brand, claims rising costs could mean lay-offs and factory closures.

Don't blame me (and Kate)

I have received the ultimate accolade – identified by the Daily Mail as one of the 50 people who have "wrecked" Britain – in a new book by Quentin Letts. My crime? "Moulding" a media elite who favour youth over everything else.

The wreckers sound like a great bunch, including the distinguished architect Denys Lasdun and the football manager Sir Alex Ferguson. According to Letts, I'm a "non-revolutionary" who hangs out with Kate Moss, left, in search of eternal youth.

It is my second insult in a week. When Nigel Farage, the head of UKIP, a party with big aspirations and limited success, was bumped off Question Time, he told newspapers that I only appeared to give the show "gender balance". Female voters, please take note.

Boris can't compare

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