HAVE you heard the story of the Easter bunny, children?

"The Easter bunny (for convenience, let's call him X to stand for a multi-national, corporate confectioner of our choice) hopped along to the nation's young 'uns this Easter and gave each little girl or boy not one chocolate egg - but a few smaller ones from the stingy aunts who didn't want to pay the postage on a decent-sized one. Then a couple of larger ones from the more considerate relatives and, for really well-behaved children, a huge £9.99 egg full of all the goodness a child needs to grow horizontally big and strong.

Bunny X was very joyful because he just loved to see those greedy smiles on the faces on the clinically-obese kids whose parents had just made X's purse very heavy indeed."

The post-Easter weigh-in occurred at the weekend to signify the end of all the eating. The scales weren't kind - it appeared that soon I, too, would be the kind of person that Bunny X and his extensive Easter advertisement campaign would be blamed for by the government, and its funny idea that obesity is the fault of food companies, rather than the person who lifts his podgy arm to shovel chips into his mouth.

Thankfully, until Christmas at least, I think I've escaped obesity's clutches - though if the statistics are correct, then at least one of the Gibbons girls should fall prey to it in the next couple of years.

Weight is the topic on everyone's lips at the moment (is the problem not that there is already too much on people's lips?) and I've been wondering how fat you have to be to be obese or how skinny to be underweight - and is anyone a happy medium anymore? Nowadays, for me and my friends, its not "Does my bum look big in this?", but "Do I look like I have diabetes and future heart problems in this?"

Come on, the Americans have been fat for years - it's only to be expected that us Brits would catch up sooner or later. And our friends across the Atlantic have never seemed that bothered about their population's expanding waistlines. On the contrary, there seems to be a national pride in McDonalds and the like.

And who'd have thought the Yanks knew the art of irony - surely the new McChicken Salad (containing more calories than the criticised Big Mac) is an American announcement to the world - "We're fat, and we like it that way."

Obviously, obesity isn't ideal - but neither is anorexia, the "in" worrying weight condition a few years back. My prophecy is that next year "normal" weight will have the papers up in arms - "Shock story - people of a normal weight will die eventually too!"

People eat fatty food because it tastes nice, and you can't exactly blame companies for taking advantage of the nation's vice.

So stop stressing, Government and media, and remember that we are blessed with a choice in what we eat, and there's nothing you can do about it. Now sit back and have a chocolate biccy - you know you want to.

Updated: 12:31 Wednesday, April 14, 2004