Warning! That string cheese in your child’s lunchbox? It’s as deadly as a Twinkie and twice as fun to eat. Ditto those little snack packs that separate a few crackers from a compartment of cheese spread: the cardiovascular equivalent of gunpowder and a spark, just waiting to be mixed together. And don’t even think about serving that baked Brie at your next party – your guests may not make it out alive.

Chester Cheetah is the new Joe Camel. Or so the Food Standards Agency in the UK would have us believe.

In the latest, ridiculous page from the playbook of the Nanny State, advertising for cheese is being banned under new rules for children’s television programs in Britain. Due to its salt and fat content for a 100mg serving (which is hefty – about half a standard brick), cheese will be treated the same way as potato chips and sugary cereals. Adding insult to injury, the FSA’s standards actually show that lump of cheddar to be more harmful than either of the above, or, more amazingly, cheeseburgers.

Yeah. Chew on that one for a bit.

The logic, and I’m being generous there, is that a child’s eating habits are influenced by the commercials shown during TV programming geared towards that audience. By banning unhealthy products from flashing on the screen in between episodes of “Thunderbirds”, the Nanny State will help tiny Brits from becoming “cheeky little fellows” in more ways than one.

It gets better. The full list of foods banned from advertising includes: instant hot cereal, multi-grain hoop cereal, Greek yogurt (made from sheep’s milk), ham, sausage, bacon, and low-fat spreads.

In short, a standard breakfast, often heralded as the most important meal of the day, has been deemed bad for British kids. Parents shouldn’t think about just skipping to lunch, however, as marmite, peanut butter, raisins, and lemonade also make the verboten list. (The last one should be especially concerning to young entrepreneurs in America: that corner lemonade stand, a staple of summer for decades, is nothing more than a merchant of 25-cent death.)

Allowed to be advertised during children’s programming: currant buns, malt loaf, cottage cheese, and chicken curry with rice. I would imagine that tap water and uncured oats also make the "OK" list, but the FSA didn’t choose to elaborate. In any case, the Royal Malt Loaf Council must be positively brimming with excitement - this is the big break they’ve been waiting for!

Cheese producers, naturally, are up in arms. Anthony Gibson, a spokesman for the National Farmers’ Union said, “There is not such thing as a bad food. It is just how much of it you eat, in what balance, and how much exercise you take.”

Mr. Gibson puts it quite nicely. While advertising may influence what children want to eat, it’s what parents keep in the house that dictates what they can eat. As a youngster, there was many a time when I would lose out in my attempt to negotiate a box of Count Chocula into the grocery cart. Mom set the rules and Life cereal was about as sexy as it got for us.

Gibson also points out the counterproductive results that are likely to come from this crusade of the Nanny State. With cheese and so many other everyday foods on the “bad” list, people may be less inclined to choose what are actually the healthier options. Based on the FSA’s guidelines, one might infer that it’s better for a child to stop at McDonald’s for a cheeseburger on the way home from school than to munch on some cheese and crackers. Common sense would dictate otherwise, of course, but that is a commodity in limited circulation these days.

Will the insanity ever end? Unlikely. Busybodies, especially ones sitting on some imperious-sounding agency and pulling a government paycheck, hinge their very existence on finding the next thing from which an unsuspecting public must be rescued. If busybodies were to fulfill their mission, they would have no job; thus the mission must be endlessly expanded to ensure self-preservation.

So, munch on that mozzarella or crunch those Cheetos at you own peril. And if your child is going to a pizza party for a birthday any time soon, keep an eye on that Chuck E. Cheese character.

He’s a rat and a cheese peddler, which means he must be up to no good.