I thought I’d heard every story there was to hear about NHS waste – until today when it’s been revealed the health service is doling out thousands of prescriptions a year for doughnuts, pizzas and biscuits.

Yep, you heard it right. According to the Health and Social Care Information Centre 211,200 prescriptions were written for gluten free or low protein food in 2014.

How can that be at a time when obesity is THE biggest killer in this country? When it’s costing the NHS £47b a year and is the greatest burden on the UK economy – bigger even than the war on terror.

So on what planet does it makes sense to spend £116m on prescriptions for special diets that include pizzas, muffin mixes and cake bars?

We’re told its coeliac patients who get prescriptions for gluten free food and those with liver disease or kidney problems who need low protein foods. But why is the NHS paying for them? They’re not medicines. When I'm on a diet and require special foods I don’t ask my GP to write me a prescription for Ryvita and low fat cottage cheese.

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Millions of people have eating disorders that require them not to eat certain stuff. But that’s not the State’s responsibility? It’s an individual’s responsibility to buy what they need to eat. And while I’m sorry for coeliac sufferers, I’m not sorry enough for them to have priority over people who need life saving cancer drugs and are being denied them on the basis of cost.

Gluten free foods are available in almost every supermarket so why should taxpayers’ money be spent paying for pasties (yes prescriptions are being issued for pasties) custard creams and doughnuts?

We’re told GPs hand out these prescriptions because they’re scared of confrontations with patients. What, so they’ll deny a sick patient a certain drug because it’s too expensive and he or she is to weak to fight back. But a coeliac who causes a fuss because they want chocolate spread and a gluten free baguette gets sorted?

Predictably some people – who’ve never even had a proper diagnosis of their condition - are abusing the system and are getting enough food on prescriptions to feed their entire family. How is that fair at a time people are being denied life saving drugs because they cost too much?

Obesity is killing hundreds of thousands a year so it is obscene the NHS is prescribing chocolate biscuits and Christmas cakes - gluten free or not.

How can our health service justify spending millions on obesity initiatives, on gastric bands ops and on telling us how to eat sensibility when they are gaily writing prescriptions for killer junk foods?

In this country almost three quarters of the population is classed as being obese or too fat. And we’re told 3.3m people in England and Wales have diabetes (which costs the NHS £10b a year) specifically caused by obesity and which can lead to blindness, kidney disease and limb amputations.

So how dare the NHS pretend to be serious about tackling the obesity crisis when its idiot policies are fuelling it.