Christine Jardine: Keep your hands off my square sausage roll Banning the unhealthiest foods is the wrong way to go about changing Scotland's diet, Christine Jardine says I pity the poor politician who tries to tell me that I cannot enjoy my square sliced sausage on a roll of a morning. All right, I don't eat them very often. Rarely, in fact. I come from the West of Scotland, after all, and have seen close-up the price that can be paid for unhealthy eating: obesity, heart disease and ultimately premature death. I am also one of those shoppers who reads the information about fat, sugar and salt content in my food. When I am cooking I use salt sparingly, and I seldom eat cakes. But just occasionally, usually when I am in a café around breakfast time and the aroma drifts out from the kitchen, I feel the draw of my ultimate comfort food. That's when I briefly give in and exercise my right to free choice. I am partial to sausages, but if I preferred sugar-coated cereals I would expect to be free to make that choice too. So it is perhaps no surprise that I am less than enamoured with the news that Labour's UK shadow health secretary Andy Burnham is keen to legislate on what we can buy to eat. Or, more precisely, what is in it. First on his hit list? Sugary breakfast cereals. It is hard to believe, but it does seem that the Labour Party genuinely believes that the health policy which will see them returned to power in Westminster at 2015 is banning Frosties. Although Mr Burnham's health portfolio does not extend to Scotland, it could be argued this is more of a consumer issue, and the distribution networks of our major food producers and retailers do not recognise boundaries. To be fair, Mr Burnham is not suggesting some new type of "fat tsar" to monitor our eating habits. No, he wants the government to legislate to control the level of certain contents, such as sugar and salt, in our food. He believes the current voluntary code of practice by food producers is not enough. But the effect of this Leveson-style solution for the food industry would be the same: to restrict our choice to those products which the government and their advisers decide are suitable. That's not very libertarian, and its Labour Party advice that I'll be more than happy to see our current government ignore. Oh, I know all the arguments. Like I said, I'm from the West of Scotland. I know the impact an unhealthy diet can have. I know our obesity and diabetes problems are threatening to explode and create a potentially unmanageable burden for our health service. And I also know that the latest figures for young people revealed by the Scottish Government in September showed that obesity in very young children was up to 13.8 per cent, and that the number of those under 15 with a healthy weight was down to 65 per cent from 70 per cent a decade before. But what I, like many of the voting public in this country, tend not to like is politicians telling us how to run our lives or, worse still, interfering directly with legislation. There is also a well trodden and successful route to changing public practices and attitudes, especially when it comes to the sector of the population who stand to benefit most from improved dietary habits: children. It's how you and I learned to cross the road, realised the importance of learning to swim, were warned of the dangers in talking to strangers, the threat from cigarettes and the risks of unprotected sex. To borrow a phrase from Mr Burnham's former leader, it's: "education, education, education." All of those things we learned, we got first from our parents, had reinforced in school and then hammered home with those slightly naff public information office films that seemed to appear on TV when we least expected them. But it worked. Who didn't know all about the badly dressed but lifesaving Green Cross Code man, the gauche swimmer Dave who beat his better-looking but non-swimming rival to the pretty girl, and that terrifying, huge Aids headstone which seemed to loom over all of us in the 1980s and 1990s? Although these obesity figures are frightening, there was some good news in that Scottish Government health survey. Families are beginning to adopt some healthier habits. Excessive drinking is down and the proportion of children under 15 eating crisps at least once a day is down from 52 per cent in 2003 to 38 per cent in 2011, and in schools our children are learning much more about food preparation and cooking. We are much better informed than we were perhaps even ten years ago about salt, sugar, fat and carbohydrates. But there is one final thing about Mr Burnham's vision of a brave new food world which disappoints me. It all seems to be about the content of mass-produced food and processed food, and about the red, amber and green food labelling we see mostly on ready meals, packet foods and general pre-packaged convenience buys. But what about fresh food? What would a Labour government do, for example, about those square sliced sausages? What about the thousands of butchers, farm shops and farmers" markets selling meat, chutneys, cheeses and vegetables. And what about the fish which we can still buy fresh from the sea and with no information available other than its type. Are they not perhaps the healthier options which are already available to us? I can't help but think that if Mr Burnham is genuine about wanting to encourage a healthier future for us, he would do better to take that advice from Tony Blair. Put the money into education, including those public information films. Make sure we are better informed about the dietary options available to us. Come up with policies which will support our farmers, fishermen and small producers. But please, put away your big stick and let us choose for ourselves what we put on our breakfast table.