On 17 June, I spoke at the first of a series of events hosted by the Vibe Bar in Brick Lane, London, and Yelp. Here are my opening remarks.

Activists have taken the lessons learned from the war on smoking and applied it to many other lifestyle choices.

From school meals to smoking, health campaigners demand ever more regulation of our lives – and it’s our personal independence that is being shafted.

From the spiked plus column, ‘Arguing the toss, spiked style’, a pub-style debate about restricting fast food for our own good.

A proposed tax on the sweet stuff would be another small blow against personal choice.

A recent edition of Channel 4’s current-affairs show Dispatches was heavily sprinkled with prejudice and misinformation.

Sugar is delicious. We should not allow anti-sugar zealots to take away our right to enjoy it.

The claim that more than half of Britons will be obese by 2050 flies in the face of the data.

It’s perverse to expect us to panic about obesity in the Third World.

How to deal with the argument that we need to be ‘warned’ about GM foods.