It’s not nice being sacked. So I didn’t cheer receiving my letter last week from the Department of Health abolishing the government’s Expert Advisory Group on Obesity on which I sat. It was created after the 2007 chief scientist’s Foresight obesity report, and incorporated the team that created that remarkable document.

Its recommendations informed the 2008 Healthy Weight Healthy Lives strategy, ditched by Andrew Lansley. Out went the analysis that obesity is a complex phenomenon requiring multiple signals and systems change. In came the soft ‘nudge’ talk already receiving derisory criticism not just from academics but from the House of Lords.

All that careful work to build consensus for real, long-term, fundamental change was jettisoned. It’s morphed into the recent Healthy Lives, Healthy People’s Call to Action, which was mauled across the press as weak. For those of us close to the issues, it was ludicrous to trumpet the need to do something.

Ahem, Mr Lansley, it’s 10 years since the National Audit Office, the chief medical officer and the Commons Health Committee lifted the lid on obesity. We’re beyond ‘calls for action’.

Or maybe I am wrong. Maybe that’s why the Expert Advisory Group had to be abolished. This is now Groundhog Day politics.

Mr Lansley has, however, launched a dangerous but interesting experiment. Industry is now responsible for tackling obesity. It’s the world of ‘nudge’, as trite a theory of behaviour change as it’s possible to invent.

Already, as last week’s The Grocer covered, confidence in the Responsibility Deals is fraying. Voices in the Expert Advisory Group said last year this would be dangerous for industry. Justin King of Sainsbury’s was right to want little to do with it.

This is government washing its hands of evidence, strategy, systems thinking, and instead leading industry by the nose into believing that doing little will deliver big changes. If obesity levels don’t drop dramatically, it’ll be industry to blame.

One of my colleagues, commenting on our sacking letter, reminded us that a company signed up to the Deals still flogs cheap confectionery when you buy a paper. This is worse than Groundhog Day. This is a horror movie.