Andrew Lansley argued last week that businesses would sign up to the public health drive as long as they weren't subject to excessive regulation.

But the aspirant health secretary will have his work cut out. Just days later The Independent and The Metro revealed that as the credit crunch has deepened, supermarkets have upped the number of deals on unhealthy foods. The figures came from the National Consumer Council, which checked out the checkouts at eight leading chains.

Still, if you're in hospital, things are looking up on the food front. The Guardian reported that caterer Compass is planning to use "new pressure cooking microwave technology" to prepare 6.6 million hospital meals. The company got the idea from Marks & Spencer's "E-steam" ready meals, apparently, so the supermarkets aren't all bad.

Journalistic integrity

Meanwhile, the paper's Bad Science columnist Ben Goldacre rounded on the media over coverage of the supposed link between the MMR vaccine and autism. "In MMR, journalists and editors have constructed their greatest hoax to date, and finally demonstrated that they can pose a serious risk to public health," he wrote.

In particular, he criticised the fact that general reporters had been covering the story. So he'll be pleased that both The Times and the Daily Mail let their science correspondents cover the news that "a breakthrough in cancer research could lead to a 'one-size-fits-all' drug that can tackle all forms of the disease", as the latter put it. Let's hope it's a story that has legs.