the times | Tuesday July 28 2020 1GM 27
Leading articles
chains with more than 250 staff will be required to
put calorie counts on their menus, and this may be
extended over time to all businesses selling food.
It is easy to be cynical that Mr Johnson’s aver-
sion to the nanny state did not survive his health
scare. Yet his change of heart is welcome, and the
strategy is sound. An affluent society need not be
an overweight one. Consumer behaviour can
change. In the 1950s, well over half the adult popu-
lation of Britain were smokers. The equivalent
figure is now less than 15 per cent. A combination
of health education, smoking bans in public
places, and above-inflation tax increases on tobac-
co has decisively affected consumption habits.
It took years, partly owing to resistance by
tobacco manufacturers, for the scientific evidence
demonstrating a causal link between smoking and
lung cancer, along with respiratory diseases, to
become a commonplace of public discourse. The
science of obesity is also clear. Cancer specialists
say that obesity in Britain now causes more cases
of bowel, ovarian, liver and kidney cancers than
smoking does. There is no mystery to countering
obesity and attaining a healthy weight. A person
who is overweight can become healthier with
moderate physical activity and a better diet. This
doesn’t require self-mortification: just expendingmore energy and consuming less calories. And to
help healthier habits, government can play a
benign rather than nannyish role. Junk food and
sugary drinks are what economists refer to as de-
merit goods, meaning they are unhealthy yet con-
sumers either ignore the risks or are unaware of
them. Health education should publicise those ef-
fects and the tax system should deter consumption.
This was the rationale of George Osborne’s tax
on sugary drinks, which came into force in 2018.
The principle ought now to be extended to a levy
on highly processed junk food. The objection that
this would be a regressive tax, hitting poorer
households the hardest, is misconceived. Taxing
unhealthy foods can help shift both production
and consumption to healthier alternatives. The
resulting decrease in obesity will also reduce the
burden on the health service.
There is a possible downside to the anti-obesity
strategy but not in any sense a decisive one. The
phenomenon of “fat-shaming”, in person or on
social media, is pervasive and it causes distress. It
can inflict psychological damage, especially to an
overweight child. Yet the idea of a healthy weight
is no myth. It is essential. There is no cause for
obese people to bear a stigma, but there is every
reason to help and encourage them to get healthy.of the law, the presumptions of the First Amend-
ment of the US Constitution are a welcome
import. We all have an inalienable right to free
speech. The same cannot be said of using Twitter
to liken Jews to the Ku Klux Klan or threatening
rape against female politicians. Yet to those who
bear the brunt of online hate, it seems as if tech
companies are wilfully blind to the difference.
In mitigation, Facebook and Twitter say they
are mere platforms, rather than the publishers
they unquestionably are. To describe themselves
as such is profitable but disingenuous. Through-
out the coronavirus pandemic, both have taken
steps to stem the tide of fake news by flagging mis-
information to users and in extreme cases remov-
ing it. Last year Twitter banned 936 accounts used
by the Chinese state to sow discord in Hong Kong.
In May it even hid a tweet from President Trump
on the grounds that it glorified violence. These are
nothing if not editorial decisions. In taking them,
social media firms implicitly accept that they, and
not their users, ultimately bear the legal and moral
liability for the content they host. It is about time
they took a similar approach to hate speech.Boycotts, be they by Twitter users or Facebook
advertisers, should serve as a wake-up call to the
social networks. Over the past decade Twitter and
Facebook have been allowed to obliterate much of
the market for newspaper journalism with only
the lightest state regulation, yet they refuse to
assume the civic and moral responsibilities of the
companies they have muscled out.
If they do not do so voluntarily, ministers should
compel them. Priti Patel, the home secretary, com-
plained that Twitter was too slow to remove
Wiley’s tirade. The same could be said of the gov-
ernment, whose indecision has left MPs absurdly
protesting about a state of affairs they can change
themselves if they choose. It may be 2022 before
the government publishes its Online Harms Bill,
which would introduce a new regulator for social
networks and with it the power to fine those who
fail to remove hateful content up to 4 per cent of
their global turnover. After that, sites could be
banned by internet service providers entirely.
Such sanctions are likely to be the only language
social media companies will understand. It is
about time ministers started speaking it.devising a deodorant to eliminate it altogether.
The unmistakable aroma that exudes from the
armpits occurs when odourless molecules are bro-
ken down by bacteria. These are separated into
amino acids and a pungent compound called thio-
alcohol. Building on earlier work in which they
showed that only a few types of microbes were
involved in the thioalcohol production, the
researchers have now alighted on a special protein
that is responsible for catalysing it. In theory, it
should be possible to find a molecule that latches
on to this enzyme to prevent it from working. No
reaction: no BO.It sounds a momentous discovery for any nerv-
ous youth embarking on a first date with a sophis-
ticated companion. Male BO is stronger and the
armpits (technically, the apocrine glands) become
especially active when boys reach puberty, as luck-
less parents throughout the ages can attest.
Yet this truth ought to make us a little wary of
bearing down on body odour. Charles Darwin
observed that, in almost all species, males com-
pete for female attention. In distant prehistory
some body odours may have had reproductive
benefits. If we are on the brink of banishing them,
we may lose more than just a whiff of our past.Weight of Evidence
Obesity is an emerging crisis in British public health. The government’s strategy to
deal with it is right to encompass education, regulation and the tax system
Few things are more satisfying to the soul than
identifying the powerful in acts of hypocrisy. The
fact that Boris Johnson could usefully lose a few
pounds does not invalidate his announcement of
a government drive to cut down levels of obesity.
On the contrary, the prime minister was candid, in
launching the programme yesterday, that before
he fell ill with Covid-19 in April he had been “way
overweight”. His experience of intensive care con-
vinced him of the need to encourage, by policy as
well as persuasion, a leaner Britain.
The policy is right and could go further. Official
statistics suggest that more than a third of adults
in Britain are overweight, and almost 30 per cent
are obese. The urgency of getting people fitter is
underlined by the coronavirus crisis. Figures from
Public Health England show that people who are
clinically obese are 40 per cent more likely to die
of Covid-19.
The centrepiece of the anti-obesity strategy is
an NHS 12-week weight loss campaign, under
which doctors would refer patients to slimming
services as easily as they do to stop-smoking
schemes. Legislation will outlaw buy-one-get-
one-free deals on unhealthy products and impose
a 9pm watershed on junk food advertising. Over
the next 12 months, restaurant and takeawayPublish and Be Damned
Social media firms should act to eliminate hate speech before they are compelled to
Twitter is quieter than usual this week. Yesterday
many of its users, including several MPs, began a
48-hour boycott in solidarity with Britain’s Jewish
community, for whom the public square of the
social network is all too often a gauntlet of racist
abuse. The walkout is first and foremost a protest
at Twitter’s indifferent response to the rapper
Wiley, whose account on the site remains in spite
of a fusillade of antisemitic messages. By ending
their conversations, the strikers hope to force an
overdue conclusion to another: how social media
companies might finally be made to account for
the hate speech they allow to fester unchecked.
Ephraim Mirvis, the Chief Rabbi, put it well in a
letter to the chief executives of Twitter and Face-
book yesterday. When their users incite hatred
and violence against others, they must act and do
so promptly. Too often, Rabbi Mirvis notes, they
do not. Their inaction becomes complicity.
At the heart of the row is a clash of cultures.
Central though social media is to British public
and indeed private life, its corporate attitudes are
uniquely American. When it comes to unpopular
or unpleasant views expressed within the boundsHeaven Scent
Scientific discovery is making strides towards banishing body odour
One day in 1773, Samuel Johnson accompanied his
biographer James Boswell arm-in-arm through
the old town in Edinburgh. “A zealous Scotsman,”
Boswell later wrote, “would have wished Mr John-
son to be without one of his five senses upon this
occasion. As we marched slowly along, he grum-
bled in my ear, ‘I smell you in the dark!’ ”
Habits of cleanliness, both of city streets and of
human persons, have altered since, yet the phe-
nomenon of rank body odour persists. Now scien-
tists at York University may have at last discovered
the biological mechanism that gives rise to BO,
and their research suggests the possibility ofUK: The Booker Prize for Fiction longlist is
announced, as chosen by a panel of judges,
this year chaired by Margaret Busby; Zoopla
publishes its latest House Price Index report.
Common swifts
have begun their
autumn migration,
one of the first of
our summer
migrants to depart.
As the adults leavefirst — usually within days of the chicks
fledging — those that remain and form
screaming parties low over our streets and
houses are this year’s juveniles. Adult swifts
undertake one of the longest migrations of
any UK breeding bird, travelling about
22,000km each year to and from equatorial
Africa, where they haunt the skies over the
Congo region’s forests, feeding on insects.
With no need to land until they are ready to
breed, young swifts may remain airborne for
years at a time, eating, drinking and sleeping
on the wing. melissa harrison
In 1588 the English fleet used fire ships to
scatter the Spanish Armada; in 1851 a total
solar eclipse was captured for the first time
on a daguerreotype photograph, by Johann
Berkowski; in 1959 Norwich was selected as
the pilot city for the new postcode system,
using automatic postal sorting.
Harry Kane, pictured,
footballer, Tottenham
Hotspur and captain of
the England national
team, 27; Val Bourne,
gardening writer, The
Living Jigsaw: the Secret
Life in Your Garden(2017), 70; Alan Brownjohn, poet, Sandgrains
on a Tray (1969), 89; Santiago Calatrava,
architect and structural engineer, World
Trade Center Transportation Hub, New
York City (2016), 69; Michael Carrick,
footballer, England (2001-15) and
Manchester United (2006-18), 39; General
Sir Peter Cosgrove, MC, governor-general
of Australia (2014-19), 73; Beverley Craven,
singer-songwriter, Promise Me (1991),
Change of Heart (2014), 57; Harriet Dart,
tennis player, UK ranking No 3, 24; Jim
Davis, cartoonist, best known as the creator
of Garfield, 75; Prof Anthony Finkelstein,
HM chief scientific adviser for national
security, 61; Juan Guaidó, interim president
of Venezuela, 37; Ben Hawes, three-time
field hockey Olympian, chairman, Team
GB Athletes’ Commission, 40; Richard
Heffer, actor, Colditz (1972-74), 74; Kelly
Hoppen, interior designer and writer, a
Dragon on Dragons’ Den (2013-15), 61;
Leo Houlding, climber, the first Briton to
free-climb El Capitan in the Yosemite Valley,
US, 40; Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard
Johns, constable and governor of Windsor
Castle (2000-08), 81; Eamonn McCabe,
photographer, 72; Mark Meadows, White
House chief of staff, 61; Riccardo Muti,
conductor, 79; Amanda Pinto, QC,
chairwoman, the Bar Council, 60; Sir
Garfield Sobers, former West Indies cricket
captain, 84; Dame Barbara Stocking,
president of Murray Edwards College,
Cambridge, chief executive of Oxfam GB
(2001-13), 69; Robert Swan, polar explorer,
the first man to walk to both the North and
South Poles, 64; Sir Colman Treacy, lord
justice of appeal (2012-18), 71; Alexis Tsipras,
prime minister of Greece (2015-19), 46.
“We all have ability. The difference is how
we use it.” Stevie Wonder, singer, in The
Story of Stevie Wonder by J Haskins (1976)
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