The final part of my analysis of the issues raised by the "Big food fight" season on Channel 4. We've had a fortnight of being absolutely blitzed with potentially new knowledge about the welfare of the animals we eat, the quality of the food we eat, the effect it has on our health and the debates about who holds responsibility for changing all of these for the better. Now, with "The Truth About Food (pt 2)" that issue of corporate and governmental responsibility, along with our own need for some more common sense, is truly fleshed out.

Contrary to what the adverts for the Dispatches documentary appeared to be about, this was mainly about eating out, going to "restaurants" (though I would never define Pizza Hut as a restaurant), and completely over-eating while there. Standing outside restaurants the presenter would ask people how many calories they thought were in their meals they might choose on a normal day and then shock them with the realities of the truth...that being that the vast majority of these meals are over your whole daily allowance for calories.

I do feel that there was too much emphasis on the "three course" nature of the meals they were talking about, and I question how many people going in to Pizza hut really opt for the whole hog of starter/pizza/dessert anyway. But in general the point is moot as in most of these cases the main meals alone are surprisingly calorific by themselves.

The presenter focused particularly on two area's because of this revelation that the public doesn't know about the content of the food we eat while out. The first was on proper "labelling" of food in restaurant chains and the second was the calorie content of children's meals.

The first subject is perhaps one that people don't really think of readily, food information on their menu, but it's not a new concept. In America they are working with the idea that for chains with over 15 restaurants they have to provide this information. McDonalds does it, possibly more because of McLibel than anything else, but this seems to go unnoticed and perhaps even seen as an expectation from the likes of McDonalds but not other restaurants. The presenter brought this up with a suitably gruff and arrogant head of the restaurant association (though I may be wrong as to which organisation he headed). His ill mannered demeanour was reminiscent of sketched on Bremner, Bird and Fortune about ministers avoiding the questions by using aggressive tactics in defence. His answer to the idea of putting more information in front of customers? Well...why should we, there's so much else to sort out with food in the nation that it's pointless restaurants doing it. He also said it was the governments fault anything was happening and to go ask them what they are doing about it.

So, off we toddle, to the Food Standards Agency, where they are versed better in the Gordon Brown tactic of repeating what you know you're good at in the hope that the person asking the question forgets what they asked. Unfortunately for the FSA we know what was asked, and going on about supermarket labelling when we ask about restaurants isn't going to cut it, especially if your next step is that you're "listening to ideas". All in all the attitudes are woeful from both sides here, and something I can't understand.

Personally, if I was inclined to do so, I could tell you the calorific content of all the meals I make. Everything I use has an approximate or exact calorific value and simply adding them all together will give me an idea of how "bad" the meal will be. When making menu's for even the smallest restaurant, how hard and bad for business would it be to provide this simple information? Restaurants defend their bad meals with high calories, specifically in terms of kids lunch meals which can be as high as twice the government RDA for an infant child's lunch intake, by saying there are healthy options...but there is nothing to quantify what these are! Which would you say is healthier, breaded mushrooms or breaded chicken goujon? The health option would surely be the mushrooms, but not only would you be wrong if you thought this but you'd probably be shocked by the fact that those mushrooms from the same "restaurant" are almost 4 times more calories than the chicken. With no context to apply to what we eat how can the customers be the ones with the responsibility of defining what is healthy or not on a menu?

On the side of all this there was a little bit of a human life montage that I guess is necessary to bring the issues of over consumption into context. We had a trio of fat people with excuses for their condition, one blames it on an under-active thyroid that doesn't exist, another on low metabolism that she doesn't have, and the final on the fat gene that he wrongly thinks he's inherited; while a family of fat people attempting to claim that they never snack and only have one meal a day were put through a "big brother" type exercise to try and isolate this seemingly magical weight gain.

All of the above people were using these excuses as crux's and it is so important for us to stop these myths perpetuating, especially as things like low metabolism and the fat gene don't keep you fat without you letting it in the first place. With less time for doctors to give routine check-ups and young people getting into the problems that come with being overweight and potentially obese while perhaps never seeing a doctor until real problems start it is hard to imagine how this kind of myth-busting can take place on a national scale.

The message from this program isn't much different to the others around it...for what you are able to do, take responsibility for yourself and don't be naive about the food you're eating, and you've got a much better chance of living a long and healthy life. What have you got to lose?