Disappearing By Dictat?

Did I fall down a crack in the universe and end up in BizarroWorld?

I have to ask, because the news headline on today's BBC Health website is "Eating Like The English Could Save Thousands Of Lives."

This is the English Diet that includes soggy, greasy chips, faggots, mushy peas, suet puddings, spotted dick and the like...

Mind you, I suppose the background makes this a bit clearer - the English Diet is apparently much healthier than...the rest of the British Diet - Scotland with its reputation of deep frying everything, Wales with it National Dish of cheese on toast and its penchant for seaweed, and Northern Ireland, land of the Almighty Potato. There's apparently a 'vegetable gap' between England and the rest of the UK. I love that idea - like people in Scotland are wandering about down by the border, when they see a field of broccoli and start cowering back in terror, like "Wha' the Hell's yon greeeen stuff, eh?"
"Ach, they're cunning wee Sassenach bastards, right enough, let's get away up the chippy for a fried boot and leave well alone, no?..."

Perhaps the more truly weird, truly scary part of this story is that the researchers from Oxford University who came up with this data about the English Diet being of much healthier have also recommended following the lead of Denmark.

You don't know about Denmark? Ah - the home of Danish pastries and kickass bacon recently passed a 'fat tax'  on foods high in saturated fats. Irony...not so big in Denmark these days, I'm thinking. Other countries are also considering passing an additional tax on fatty foots and fizzy drinks. And the 'Eat Like An Englishman' boffins at Oxford are endorsing the idea of exploring a British tax on foods that are "bad for you".

Can I just say, I will never be the Disappearing equivalent of a rabid ex-smoker, who then thinks smoking is the most evil thing on the planet. As far as I'm concerned, if you wanna shove a block of lard into pastry and then deep-fry the guts out of it and eat the whole thing yourself - good on ya. Enjoy if it genuinely makes you happy. There are plenty of reasons why people eat crap - poverty, ease, sheer gorgeous enjoyment, self-hatred, yadda yadda yadda, but should you be forced into behaving "properly"? By all means have the debate among yourself, this Disappearing Man will be voting strictly in the negative. But then I'm in favour of legalising most things.

Except possibly Justin Bieber.