This is a bit of a blow to the theory, isn't it?

We're told that all are fatty lardbuckets simply because too much sugared water is being drunk. Thus we can and should have that tax on sugary drinks.

At which point we are told:

Soft drinks made with artificial sweeteners, such as diet colas, do not help people lose weight and may be as big a part of the obesity problem as the full-sugar versions, academics have said.

A paper by researchers at Imperial College London and two universities in Brazil contends that artificially sweetened beverages, often called diet drinks, are just as big a problem as those containing sugar.

We might like to apply a little basic logic here. If not sugared water causes the same problems as sugared water then it's not the sugar causing the problems is it? And thus a tax on sugar is not the solution.

All of the more minor explanations offered here don't obviate that basic logic. For example, people who drink the diet versions might think that they can gorge on something else because they've been so good. OK, we have no doubt that could be part of it. But it does tell us again that it's not the sugar in the drinks causing the problems, is it? It's caloric intake which is.

At which point we'll drift off into supposition ourselves. A long held contention here is that the rise of lardbucketism is a result of a general diet suitable for the previous generation, one which used rather more calories each day than the current one does. The major difference, given that we are mammals and this is the major use of energy in mammals, being temperature regulation.

Or, as we've also said before, if you want to get a slim population then tax home heating. And if you're not prepared to tax home heating then you don't, sufficiently, want a slim population, do you?