THE HEALTH zealots have been lying to us. Smoking is not the greatest avoidable danger confronting mankind. Fat is. Research published in The Lancet suggests that obesity accelerates the ageing of human DNA by nine years and smoking by only 4.6.

Having gained pounds since giving up tobacco, I am appalled. The saintly may resist both cigarettes and calories, but for those responsible for public health the conclusion is plain. Fat must be stigmatised still more vigorously than cigarettes.

The campaign must, of course, learn from the anti-smoking lobby. Revolting warnings on food packaging are an obvious place to start. If a smoker must be informed that his pleasure kills, then a doughnut dunker or burger muncher desperately needs more emphatic guidance. Ministers must impose a mandatory warning that “Eating this will make you repulsive, then dead”. It should be accompanied by photographs of stricken fatties suffering agonising, fatal seizures.

Never mind that such images may have to be fabricated. Anti-smoking campaigners have been distorting evidence for decades. They are unreasonably reluctant to admit that many smokers do not die as a result of their habit, still more so to accept that a lifelong 20-a-day user faces only a one in ten risk of contracting lung cancer.

In fact, given the extent to which the genuine dangers of smoking have been exaggerated, any crusade against spreading waistlines will have to be spectacular just to avoid the law of diminishing returns.

The anti-smokers’ most creative invention can help. Evidence that secondary smoking harms health is as scientific as a Ouija board. But that has not prevented it boosting hostility to cigarettes from opinion to legislation. Now government must urgently demonstrate the dangers of secondary fattening.

A threat exists every time I see some svelte young thing consuming chips and imagine that it may be safe for me to eat them too. Such public displays must be outlawed.

But why stop there? In light of the new evidence it cannot be reasonable to ban cigarettes in pubs that serve food. Close analysis of the new research suggests that the health of the potentially obese could be improved by making the availability of cigarettes compulsory. It is impossible to chew and inhale simultaneously and smoking instead of eating may extend life expectancy.