It's not our fault.

None of it.

The obesity, the smoking, heart attacks, strokes, you name it.

It all started a few millennia ago when those pesky Neanderthals came along.  They wandered uninvited into our caves and mud huts and with a distinct lack of politeness, they shagged our women.

Neanderthals were apparently the knuckle-draggers of the old world.  They obviously smoked like chimneys, had little in the way of manners but a lot in the way of mental problems.  They probably polished off a bottle of Bushmills a day as well. If they felt like a good ride and a couple of Benson & Hedges afterwards then they just went ahead, and our women took the brunt, not unlike the modern carry-on in Skobieville.

Unfortunately with all their lusts and rapings they forgot to use condoms and as a result a shed-load of our women became pregnant.  Having done their impregnations they fucked off back into the forests and died, presumably without paying any child support.

But the damage had been done.  Their DNA became our DNA and it's their DNA that has us all depressed, smoking our heads off and dropping like flies from heart disease and skin cancers.

So they can wiffle on about smokers being weak willed addicts, and no safe level of sunbathing.  They can plan and plot to force us onto a diet of bland and fill us full of anti-depressants but it isn't our fault at all.  We can't help it – it's in our genes.  Literally.

So if the Puritans really want to get to the root cause they should chase the Neanderthals and leave us alone.

They would probably feel right at home with them.