Editor-At-Large: We are fat, drunk and stupid. And we don't care

Admit it, we are a nation in denial. Cyber-health has replaced the real thing. As spending on sportswear rockets, so has our weight. More and more of our children become obese at a much younger age. David Beckham is worshipped as a demi-god by people who'd keel over if they had to bend down and tie up their own

shoelaces. Live football ratings on Sky boom and so do the sales of soft squishy sofas. More column inches than ever are written in newspapers about alternative health as the days we take off on sick leave increase. One of the UK's top-selling magazines is entitled Men's Health – and young men today are fatter, drink more, take more drugs and do less exercise than their fathers. You can't open any magazine without page after page of ads selling gadgets, which you can order by post without even having to leave your seat, which will firm your thighs, flatten your stomach or vibrate away your cellulite.

The other day a Sunday colour magazine spent five pages analysing the merits of various diets (to mark less than three months to the summer holidays), and continued with three pages of recipes featuring pasta and creamy desserts. I am guilty of this health schizophrenia as much as anyone. Walking 10 miles, I'll eat two jumbo sandwiches, a full roast dinner with wine and choccies, and then wonder why there's a nasty spare tyre where once I had a waist. Sales of pain- killers and supplements soar.

Now the Foods Standards Agency has issued a set of warnings declaring that too many vitamins may damage our health. Last year scientists told us that taking vitamin E, beta-carotene and vitamin C did nothing to fight cancer. Now it seems that, far from making us fitter, many supplements can actually make us ill. Huge doses of B6, for example, can lead to lack of feeling in the arms and legs, while too much chromium could actually cause cancer. Zinc can weaken your bones and phosphorus can result in diarrhoea. No more than 1,000mg of vitamin C should be taken daily.

It's amazing I'm still alive because, as a result of reading somewhere that ginkgo biloba increased your memory and milk thistle acted like washing powder on your liver, I took massive amounts of both for years. At one stage I contributed to the £175m a year we spend on these supplements by shovelling down about 27 every morning at breakfast. As a result, I suffered, not from brittle bones, diarrhoea or cancer, but extreme flatulence. I visited a nutritionist who charged me £75 to write out a diet sheet and then flogged me a load more supplements in the form of drops to sprinkle on food, and bottles of rare oil from Tunisia I had to drink 30 minutes before a meal.

Most alternative health regimes are not designed for those of us who actually have to work for a living. They take up loads of time and require diaries and timetables. You need charts to compute your food combinations and calculators to add up calories. Getting healthy this way is better suited to people who slot it around their yoga classes, aura cleansing and dog psychotherapy sessions.

We spend £175m a year on useless supplements because it's easier than dieting, cheaper than a personal trainer and less nerve-racking than joining a self-help group. In our version of cyber-health we shop for anything with the magic words "lite" on the packaging. We can justify drinking a bottle of wine a day if we consume maxi-strength milk thistle pills. A couple of Beroccas can be gulped down a lot more easily than having to chew an apple. We've held back the ageing process with potions derived from giant mussels, signed up for gorgeous complexions by consuming pints of royal jelly, and sprinkled bee pollen over our muesli in the quest for wrinkle-free necks.

I have friends who take 65 pills every morning with their diet cokes and peanut buttered toast. They might be passing wind a lot, but they are as fit as fiddles – no cancer or brittle bones there. I wonder why the Food Standards Agency can't find something more dangerous to attack than plastic-coated extracts of fish poo or common weeds turned into sleeping aids.

Every day we encounter far more ways of getting sick than eating too many vitamin pills. What about the lead fumes that pollute our cities? The recycled old air we breathe in air-conditioned offices and factories? The millions of germs we are exposed to on over-crowded trains? The processed foods we serve in hospitals and schools? Those fast-food beef and chicken snacks that have been dosed with God knows what growth hormones? Can you tell me that a combination of all or any of the above is not more unhealthy than a few maxi-strength vitamin C pills to combat a roaring hangover? I'm sticking to my spirulina – it tastes as if it might be goldfish excrement so it must be doing me good.

Moaning farmers

Only 0.3 per cent of England's population – 174,000 people – are in full-time agricultural work, according to a report by the Countryside Agency. It found that just 17 per cent of those surveyed thought that farms and farmers were important, although 90 per cent believed that the countryside should be "kept the way it is now". So the rural economy is increasingly dependent, not on the economics of keeping cattle or sheep, but on the business generated by day trippers, who spend £9bn annually, far more than is provided by farming. The new jobs in the countryside are in hotels, pubs, cafés and tourist attractions. And the sooner Prince Charles stops complaining about the misunderstood lot of the British farmer, the better. Why they deserve more subsidies, sympathy and hand-wringing than the thousands who invest their lives in small rural businesses like tea shops and B&B establishments I can't imagine. For those of us who live in towns, the countryside is cherished and valued. We are funding its regeneration when we visit it and are made welcome. Every time I hear farmers moaning about litter and ramblers, I laugh. Aren't the most unsightly vistas to be found around farmyards? Acres of rusting tractors, flapping plastic bags, nylon string, disused caravans and abandoned machinery?

For two years I was the Vogue restaurant critic, and luckily never visited anywhere I reviewed twice – having been less than kind about an establishment's offerings, I couldn't risk a chef exacting revenge. What is it about making neat little pyramids of partridges or mincing up pike that turns fully grown men into badly behaved temperamental divas? Last week a talented chef fell to his death after an extraordinary series of outlandish antics on the scaffolding of a block of flats. Although my partner owns a restaurant, I'm careful to steer clear of anyone who actually cooks. You can never tell when they are going to have a bit of a "turn". And when I meet Marco Pierre White, I'm very polite.