The anti-obesity strategy outlined by ministers yesterday is not unlike the typical British body. The framework is sound enough but its potential is buried beneath layers of blubber. The need for a drive against obesity is clear: the link between it and a range of health difficulties is indisputable. Yet whether the whole £372 million programme that was set out will be value for money, or produce any advance of note, is disputable.

The strategy rightly distinguishes between the position of children and adults. A more interventionist approach is entirely acceptable in schools. A (rather grandly titled) National Child Measurement Programme was introduced in 2005 so that elementary information - the height and the weight of each boy and girl - could be collected. It was decided, though, to allow parents to have an opt-out from the height chart and the scales, and initial evidence suggests that it is precisely those who need to be checked the most whose details are not being recorded. That anomaly has to be ended. Advice to families cannot start until the extent of any weight problem that a child might have is known and a remedy considered.

Elsewhere, ministers can point to better outcomes. The initiative to raise nutritional standards in school meals has been firmly established, but would reap more rewards if all pupils had to remain on the premises during the lunch period. Most encouragingly, the amount of time devoted to PE and sports in school is increasing. It would be better, nevertheless, to entrench that trend rather than make cooking classes a compulsory element of an already overcrowded national curriculum between the ages of 11 and 14.

A lighter touch should be taken with adults. There is a strong case for more explicit labelling of food products, such as the “traffic light” system that has been introduced recently, and manufacturers and retailers alike should be encouraged to reach agreement on common standards for this. People are entitled to consume unhealthy foods out of free choice but they should not do so just from ignorance. Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, is also right to highlight the merit of exercise and to promote sport for adults, exploiting the 2012 Olympics as a catalyst. More facilities across the country would be welcome.

It is where the basics end and the blubber begins that is troubling and probably wasteful. Do we really require a National Helpline for Breastfeeding Mothers? How many women will ring it? More walking would be splendid but is creating a Walking into Health campaign, with the target of “getting a third of England walking at least 1,000 more steps daily by 2012 - an extra 15 billion steps a year” not unduly prescriptive? The announcement that there is to be a new Cabinet committee on health and wellbeing will doubtless be received with rejoicing across the land but what will be the benefits of the Government's attempt to build a “Coalition for Better Health” via “deliberative events, citizens' juries and regional summits including business, the voluntary sector, trade unions and Government”? Who might regulate all this micromanagement? Ofscoff?

Ministers will achieve far more if they focus on the essentials. In schools this means as much emphasis on “energy out” (exercise) as “energy in” (food). For adults, the same is true but it involves not treating them as children. For Whitehall, it is this: practise what you preach about obesity.