Fast food outlets make you fat according to Cambridge University research.

Wow? Who would have thought it?

The study looked at workers’ consumption of takeaway food such as hamburgers, pizza, fried food and chips at home, work and on their commute.

Dr Thomas Burgoine said: “Those most exposed to takeway food outlets overall were nearly twice as likely to be obese, compared to those least exposed.”

He added: “Takeaway food outlets are now more accessible than they’ve ever been. We have a food environment in which it’s increasingly easy to make unhealthy choices.”

The study found that the average person encounters 32 takeaway restaurants around their home, workplace and travelling between the two.

One way of combating the obesity problem would be by restricting their number, it said.

Surely, one way to combat the problem is to take a packed lunch to work and restrict yourself to a bag of chips only twice a week. It’s called being sensible and taking responsibility for your own health.

That is not rocket science - or any kind of science - it’s common sense. And yet research that states the obvious continues to be debated as if it might produce a solution.

Ideally, attitudes have to change but Jamie Oliver tried that with school meals and, when healthy food was introduced at a South Yorkshire school, indignant mums took takeaway orders through the playground railings and organised a lunchtime run to the chippy.

Besides, how would you suddenly impose fast food restrictions?

Would the Health Police declare that a village or urban area could have no more than three takeaways?

This would mean some would have to close. Which would go: Chinese, Asian, chippy, pizza parlour, fried chicken, burger joint?

Research in the US does not agree that fast food exposure results in obesity.

Dr Kathryn Neckerman, of Columbia University, New York, has a different solution.

“Instead of restricting takeaway food, we should seek to transform it,” she said, and  added: “It is difficult now to imagine a world in which broccoli rivals chips at the takeaway counter, but small steps in this direction are already being taken.”

Healthy takeaway options should be available, highly visible, tasty and cheap, she said. This is a reasonable idea. Healthy eating cannot be imposed. How people eat is a matter of choice but by all means give them a healthy choice.

Even so, I doubt if there will ever be a lunchtime rush for a bag of broccoli with bits on.