Low fat diets and exercise are pointless for those wanting to lose weight and obese people should simply eat less, a former shadow health minister told the House of Lords yesterday.

Lord McColl, emeritus professor of surgery at Guys Hospital in London, warned that current health advice to avoid fat was ‘false and misleading’ and was fuelling the obesity epidemic.

Speaking at a House of Lords debate, the former surgeon warned that exercising was useless against the huge levels of calories from carbohydrates and sugars that people are now consuming. He warned that the obesity epidemic was as bad for public health as the 1919 flu epidemic.

“In the UK the Department of Health and Nice (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) maintains for many years that the obesity epidemic was due to lack of exercise,” he told peers.

“It’s a pity that the 500 people employed by Nice didn’t think to go into the gymnasium get on a machine and exercise to see how few calories you actually burn off.

“One can pedal away on one of those machines for half an hour and only two or three hundred calories are burned up. One has to run miles to take a pound of fat off.