Eat this, don’t eat that ... it’s health studies I try to avoid

It used to be that, if you had so much as a sip of alcohol when pregnant, you would give birth to a two-headed baby. Not any more. Quite the opposite, in fact. According to the latest study last week (can it really be more than five minutes since the last one?) a couple of weekly glasses of Sancerre (provided they don't have deadly levels of metal) will ensure your baby is brighter and better-behaved than your abstinent neighbour's, and thus more likely to get a scholarship to that lovely north London school with the navy blazer.

Quite what the point is of a study whose only consequence will surely be to make abstinent women furious and booze-lovers more likely to get plastered, I'm not quite sure. But I do know there isn't a mother in London who wouldn't prefer to see a well-funded maternity service than another survey telling her what she should and shouldn't do when she is pregnant. Talk about chucking money down the wrong drain.

We are ruled by a government that never seems to pass up the opportunity to interfere, yet the more it interferes, the more confused we all seem to become. What nobody in office has realised is that, however many health surveys you present them with, and however persuasive the results, people will always massage the evidence to suit their own lifestyles. "At least I'm getting some fresh air," I heard one smoker say to another yesterday as he tugged on a Marlboro Light. Was he joking? Who knows? Even as we speak, somebody is probably authoring a survey to prove that smoking on the pavement is less likely to cause cancer than smoking indoors, provided you stand on one leg and sing Jingle Bells while you do it.

Still, our penchant for massaging the truth is nothing compared to that of the food giants, many of whom should truly burn in hell for the bollocks they try to spin us. On holiday the other week, I actually sat through a TV ad in which the makers of Nutella (ingredients: sugar, vegetable oil, cocoa) assured me it was a healthy start to a child's day, on the basis that it "released energy slowly". And I've lost count of the number of foods I've spotted in the supermarket, stamped with the Government's traffic-light system, that have more greens than reds on their packaging, even though they are virtual heart attacks in a packet. Health warnings should carry a health warning.