IT'S an ominous time for fatties. The response to the first SA National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey suggests that they're next on the dreaded nanny agenda.

The survey results certainly are grim. "Sick, fat and sad," one newspaper screamed about findings that six out of every ten women older than 50 are so dik that they're at significant risk of a lifestyle disease, 22% of toddlers aged between two and five are overweight or obese compared to 12% in the US, one in two women and one in three men under the age of 40 are hopelessly unfit . . . you get the picture.

And if you didn't, there was a photograph. Nothing reinforces middle class prejudices about the poor and the conviction that something must be done to help them quite like a close-up of rolls of lard on a fat woman's back.

We're at risk of diabetes, strokes, heart attacks, cancers and God knows what else. Perhaps it's more accurate to suggest we're a country with a cash-strapped working class. It's not rocket science. Times are hard, pennies are few, so the poor eat rubbish. Eating healthy is a luxury.

But most of us, according to the survey, know we're overweight. What's more, about 95% of us are convinced we're in goodish health. And we probably are - provided, of course, we don't do something stupid like run up and down a field in the blazing sun to qualify for a crack at being a metro cop.

However, the spoilers are standing by. The Human Sciences Research Council warns that we may not be as healthy as we believe because, as one report put it, "many [of us] might not have been diagnosed with disease or post-traumatic stress disorder. One in ten people suffer from mental illness caused by mental illness caused by trauma or exposure to violence."

And, in his response to the findings, the health minister, Aaron Motsoaledi, was quick to draw attention to his old standby demons, alcohol and tobacco.

Adult smoking had halved since 1993, it was found, from a prevalence of 32% to about 16% last year. Which is a good thing. Here at the Mahogany Ridge we believe only the youth should smoke. Their lungs are strong and can handle the abuse; at our age, though, no good will come of it.

Oddly, the number of people bitching about smokers has doubled. This has prompted researchers to call for a "total ban" on smoking in public places. In other words, we are fast becoming addicted to being smug pains in the arse who enjoy interfering with other people. Government and churchy talk radio encourage us in this regard.

Booze is next, and the state was "marching forward" with its plans against alcohol advertising. "We are not doing this because we want to be a nanny state," Motsoaledi said. "We just want to save our country from impending doom."

Many share this touching concern - which doesn't bode well for dagga's decriminalisation, I may add.

However, what was more worrying was the report's findings on food security. In a third of the households surveyed, children between 10 and 14 go without breakfast, about one in five kids have no one to help them prepare lunch for school, and one in four households goes to bed hungry.

In its reaction, the National Union of Metalworkers of SA has come over all shouty with demands that government do something at once, the most alarming of which is the establishment of a state-owned food company with outlets everywhere that will ensure "fair and reasonable pricing of food products for the public. The food parastatal will also ensure that a food basket is accessible to poor households and will provide a system of food coupons for the poor and vulnerable".

Not a good idea. Think for a moment of all the areas in which government doesn't really perform all that well - education, social welfare, health, housing, and so on - and now consider the wisdom in having them feed us, too.

Still, a campaign for a healthier diet cannot be a bad thing. President Jacob Zuma's nephew, Khulubuse, could be roped into being its poster boy. This would almost certainly take his mind off his current financial problems.

Quite why he should find himself in such straitened circumstances is a mystery, given that, based on his sterling performance with Aurora Systems, he was recently awarded two oil exploration contracts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

But here he is, reduced to scrounging R50 000 from journalists who want to cover his wedding to Swazi princess Fikisiwe Dlamini,

Shame, such hard times.

This article first appeared in the Weekend Argus.

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