Last week the Daily Telegraph revealed that the Food Standards Agency (FSA) is targeting fish and chip shops in a campaign to help tackle obesity in Britain and demanding thicker chips, saying the bigger the chip the less fat absorbed.

With 80 fish and chip shops involved, the pilot project launched last November is to be extended across areas of Cambridgeshire, Greater Manchester and Northern Ireland during March.

Local authorities will test the amount of fat in a portion of chips, and other businesses such as Indian and Chinese takeaways will gradually be drawn into the scheme which, if successful, will be extended nationwide after two years.

Douglas Roxburgh, president of the National Federation of Fish Friers opposes the scheme, saying the FSA ‘should be concentrating on fast food outlets who make the thin French fries, not the traditional independent chip shop.

‘At the moment it seems like a case of picking on the little guys because they can't touch the big guys – which is totally unfair.’

Henry Lee, father of Hedge End’s J Henry’s fish and chip shop owner Shane Lee also thinks the FSA is focusing on the wrong chips, ‘It should be McDonald's and Kentucky the FSA is targeting with their really thin ones.’

Obesity is a growing problem in the UK, but is this a sensible approach to tackling it?

The FSA says that an average portion of fish and chips contains 595 calories and 9.42g of fat and increasing the size of chips will dramatically reduce the calorie content – but a pizza has 871 calories and 11g of fat, and a serving of chicken korma 910 calories and 15.5g of fat!

Do you want to see the ‘Chip Police’ in Hedge End?

The Food Standards Agency states on its website that it was set up to ‘to protect the public's health and consumer interests in relation to food.

‘Everything we do reflects our vision of Safe food and healthy eating for all.’

Is this scheme protecting the public health?

Perhaps Henry from J Henry’s should have the last word: ‘Our chips are pretty chunky anyway. Also, the thicker they are the longer they’ll take to cook. We’re satisfied with the size of our chips!

‘And we wouldn’t change if asked to anyway!’

The Food Standards Agency is an independent government department established in 2000.

The National Federation of Fish Friers was set up in 1913 and works ‘to Promote and Protect the Interests of some 8,500 Fish and Chip Shop Proprietors throughout the United Kingdom.’